The problems keep coming for Newark Liberty International Airport. On Monday, it was a staffing shortage at an air traffic control facility that serves the airport.
Most flights destined for Newark were being delayed at their origin airports by more than an hour and 40 minutes midday on Monday because too few air traffic controllers were available. The Federal Aviation Administration was also expecting to be short on controllers for Newark for about four hours on Monday night.
The F.A.A. said in an advisory that it was delaying the incoming flights from all U.S. airports and some in Canada. Such delays are not uncommon, but can have cascading effects on flights around the world.
Monday’s delay was the latest in a string of setbacks for Newark, one of the nation’s busiest airports and a large hub for United Airlines. On Friday, the air traffic control facility in Philadelphia that guides planes at the airport had a brief radar outage. A similar outage late last month had left controllers unable to communicate with pilots for about 30 seconds.
That outage, on the afternoon of Monday, April 28, had followed months of glitches and other problems that have rattled the controllers who manage the Newark airspace. The F.A.A. moved that work from a facility in Long Island, New York, to the one in Philadelphia last summer in the hopes that relocating to a more affordable area would help in hiring more controllers.
As of March 2024, only 59 percent of available controller roles were filled at the air traffic control facility that handled flights at Newark, LaGuardia Airport, Kennedy International Airport and other New York airports before the Newark responsibility was moved to Philadelphia.
