Kate Kelly
Appearances
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Yeah, so as your listeners know, because you guys have talked about this, there have been air traffic controller shortages nationwide. So why has Newark been a particular crux of the problem? It has to do with the complexity of it and the amount of experience that's needed and expected. So if you want to become an air traffic controller...
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
It's a really great question, Rachel, and one that I've been asking myself and my colleagues. Are we just paying more attention in the wake of the DCA crash to issues, whether it's wing bumping or actual crashes in the national airspace, or are there actually more occurring? Anecdotally, it certainly feels like the latter. But what I think has really caught people's attention
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
You would start with a training process in Oklahoma City, which is where the FAA's academy is. You would have had to apply for that and be admitted to the program. Then after that, you would probably go to a pretty light airspace, at least relative to these New York City airspaces, Fargo, North Dakota, for example. Hmm.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
And maybe you would do that for a couple of years, and maybe after that, you would do something like Indianapolis, Indiana. And then after you had done that for a while, you might eventually work your way up to an airspace like Newark.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
But even when you arrived at Newark, even if you were coming from a major airport like O'Hare, you would still need to train for roughly a year to learn all the nuances and all the techniques associated with that Newark airspace. Right.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
So even if today the FAA identified 10 new people that it wanted to send to do air traffic control at Newark, that would be a year, give or take, before they'd be ready.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
And these staffing issues at Newark are not new. In fact, part of the reason that these people we're talking about were relocated to Philadelphia in the first place was to solve for a problem that Newark controllers were having with low personnel. They had been working in Long Island for many years, controlling this Newark airspace from Long Island.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
And there were ongoing issues recruiting and retaining people who could work that airspace. Some of it had to do with cost of living. Long Island, New York area, an expensive place to live, an expensive place to try to buy a house or raise a family. So it spent several years trying to convince controllers and their union that they should move to Philadelphia.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
The FAA reasoned that with the lower cost of living in the Philadelphia area, they might be able to recruit and retain more people. So that move to Philadelphia, did that help with the staffing issues, ultimately? Well, no. And to be fair to the FAA, it was always going to be a long-term play, given this kind of long pipeline we were just talking about.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
But a variety of issues have meant that their numbers are actually down at this point. So let me just walk you through it. For a long time, the FAA had set the air traffic controller target associated with this Newark space at over 60 people. 63 is the number that I heard.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
But around the time that they proposed and undertook this move of people to Philadelphia, they changed the target to something like 42 air traffic controllers. That would be a full staff for controlling Newark airspace from this particular hub.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
I don't have a clear explanation for that, and controllers think it's strange. But they lowered their expectations at some stage in time, maybe because they were just trying to be pragmatic about the numbers that they had. Now, almost a year into this relocation, the FAA now says they have 22 people who are fully certified to work the airspace. But let me put that in context for you.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
So according to a government document about staffing that I've reviewed, A full day shift, an eight-hour shift, should be 10 people. And a night shift should be 14 people. At the time of this radar outage that we're talking about, you had four controllers on duty sitting in front of those radar scopes.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
are these issues at Newark Liberty International Airport, which is one of the busiest in the national air system in the U.S.,
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Well, let me tell you what the CEO of United Airlines says about this. He's working in close contact with the FAA. He wrote in a letter today, In ideal weather with full staffing and with perfectly functioning technology, the FAA tells us that the airport can only handle 77 flights per hour.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
And yet, the FAA regularly approves schedules of 80-plus flights per hour almost every day between 3 and 8 p.m.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
At a certain point, the FAA will say that. When enough controllers don't show up for work for whatever reason— They have what are called staffing triggers, and they just can't run the airspace. They either have to dramatically reduce the number of flights that can come in and out on that day, or they have to engage in a ground stop.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
One famous example of this occurred in 2019 when there was a government shutdown and about 10 controllers in different spots around the country called in sick on a given day. And the political pressure with stranded passengers and canceled flights became so great that that the government essentially reopened.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
They had a major radar and radio outage on Monday, the 28th of April, that led to essentially chaos for passengers and a public outcry among government officials and even among some controllers themselves that the system was not safe and was not necessarily reliable for all the people flying in and out of that airport.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
So there are cases in which the staffing is just so low that the FAA says, basta, we can't continue flying. They are case by case periodically slowing flights or grounding flights. But to my knowledge, they haven't proactively cut off the number of flights that can come in and out of Newark right now.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Yeah, so Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who just came in in January, has been pretty outspoken about this in general and in recent days. He has said that the technology is antiquated. He has said that we need to move far ahead in terms of modernizing that technology. He also wants to solve for the staffing problems.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
He's already introduced some enhanced pay and incentives for people to consider joining the FAA as controllers. And they seem like they're committed to cutting red tape, investing where necessary, putting in better technology, and so on. So I think the momentum and the commitment are there in theory. And I think they may be able to move forward more expeditiously than some of their forebears.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
On the other hand, these are not quick fixes. Maybe they'll come up with some innovative ideas for bringing in new, fresh talent and fast-tracking them, but they can only track them so fast. And if the technology is not backed up and consistent, it's not going to help anyone.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Yeah, I think it's a fair question and one that I can't readily answer. I do know something about air traffic control, for example, in Washington, D.C., and it's absolutely got its own set of challenges. And while staffing has been a problem there, too, they have a totally separate issue, which is just the complexity of their airspace with helicopters flying in and out.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
And that became the issue during this terrible crash in January. So I think what's tricky about this conversation is every airport, every airspace is nuanced in its own way. That's why these controllers spend years even getting up to par on the place where they're working.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Yeah, it's rational. But I also think statistically aviation is safe. The FAA does have basic guardrails that we need to rely on them to put in place. And even in this case, the airline that is a major user of this particular airport is telling us we're keeping safety first and foremost. We're dialing back some of our operations here and we're going to lean on the FAA to do more as well.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
And I have to say, I'm not a nervous flyer, but I've had a hard time flying out of Washington Reagan since the crash in January that I've been covering, just because I know how complex that airspace is, and I know that they, too, are dealing with staffing shortages.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
In terms of Newark, I don't fly them a lot, but I was in a group chat recently with some people who were involved in a trip out of Newark. And I was really uncertain of how to reply. I have my own opinions, which is that the system is stressed right now, and I do know of some of the particular challenges that Newark has.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
At the time, though, I really didn't know any more than the other people knew. And as we used to say when I worked at The Wall Street Journal and we were covering the beginning of the financial crisis, you don't cry fire in a crowded theater. If you don't have a specific and credible reason to tell people that a crisis is afoot, you don't say it.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Because it's not fair and it's not ethical to alarm members of the public, even your friends and family, if you don't know for sure that there's an issue.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Picture a relatively normal early afternoon at an air traffic control hub. where you have these air traffic controllers who essentially guide planes in and out of airports, sitting at workstations in front of what we call scopes, radar scopes. And this is kind of a circular screen that tells you within a certain diameter of airspace which aircraft are flying in and out.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Do you have any trips planned? Yes, I'm actually out of town right now, and I will be returning to New York to LaGuardia.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
So they're watching these, they have a headset, and the headset is attached to a radio frequency through which they can have two-way communications with pilots who are in the air. So they're sitting there, and out of nowhere, some of the radar scopes essentially go dark. Not all of them, but some of them.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
So what happens then is one person starts shouting, I've lost my radar feed. A supervisor rushes over to see what's going on. Another controller grabs a landline telephone, calls colleagues in air traffic control who are based in Long Island, and says, please hold your planes in the LaGuardia Airport airspace because I don't know if my planes are going to drift into your planes.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
And then at the same time, controllers gathered around one of the radar screens that was functioning. And as it was described to me, they were just trying to figure out what else they could possibly do to improve the situation, ensure that crashes didn't happen, or get in touch with other colleagues who could help them.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
But there wasn't a whole lot left for them to do other than hope for the best and hope that their visuals and their audios came back.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Other controllers who are in the building come and take over because the experience of those that have been on those positions is just so terrifying that they can't be expected to just pick right up on the work. And, you know, there was one person in the hallway apparently who was just trembling and others who went home and cried and are having nightmares at this point.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Yes, controllers have told me, Rachel, that this is the worst type of thing that can happen other than an actual crash. How long did that outage last in total? To the best of our understanding, the radio came back after roughly 30 seconds. Although, to those who were in the room witnessing this, apparently it felt like... An eternity. An eternity. Yep.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
The displays took a little bit longer, so that was closer to a minute and a half.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
90 seconds is a long time when you consider the fact that these aircraft are supposed to be separated, varying depending on their location and how close to landing or takeoff they are, by at least a couple of miles, two, three miles, and at least 1,000 vertical feet.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
So within 90 seconds, you could well see how just mathematically you could have planes crashing into each other without proactive guidance from an air traffic controller.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
So to the best of our understanding, flights were circling, they were delayed in landing, they were delayed in taking off. Clearly, what had happened created a disruption and flights had been unable to proceed, essentially. So they tried to get those flights back on track. But in the days that have followed, there have been flight cancellations. There have been delays.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Passengers that colleagues of ours have talked to at the airport have been frustrated. They said they're waiting on customer service calls for 45 minutes or an hour. They don't know what to do. People broadly are nervous about flying in and out of Newark Airport. They're wondering if it's safe.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
This has had a cascading effect of creating anxiety and mistrust in the public, and it's unlikely that there's a quick fix.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Yeah, so I think the show has covered really well some of the issues bedeviling the United States airspace and air traffic control in particular. But in my opinion, Newark has become sort of this recent crucible for a combination of two pretty major strands fraying at the same time, both technology that we all collectively rely on to keep air travel safe and
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
and staffing issues so all of that is combining for probably the most public most nerve-wracking air travel disruption that we've seen in recent years it's all coming to a head at newark basically yes well let's start with the technology piece of it can you just explain what exactly is going wrong with the technology at newark
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Yeah, so start with the notion that system-wide, the FAA is working with pretty dated technology. Two lawmakers this week have referred to the fact that this Newark outage generated with a quote-unquote fried copper wire.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
I haven't been able to verify that with government officials, but it's been spoken of and written about and is probably a plausible metaphor, if not a real explanation, because you are dealing with copper wiring in a lot of these locations. Got it.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
That's right. The other problem with this aged system is that it's prone to hiccups and delays that can make it extremely difficult at times for air traffic controllers to keep up with what is happening. The air traffic information they're getting may not be real time or may be frozen or interrupted permanently. by glitches along the line. Just explain that.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
So the way that air traffic control works at a lot of airports might actually be different than what you think it is. You might have an image of a bunch of people sitting in a tower at a place like Newark Airport with radar or maybe even with binoculars looking out the window and directing those flights in and out, watching them land and take off from the runway.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
That's actually not the full picture. You do have people sitting in a tower at the airport, but you also have a whole bunch of people sitting off-site in locations that might be dozens of miles away, watching that air traffic as well, and using radar scopes and two-way radio communications to guide those airplanes.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
When it comes to Newark, for a long time, decades, many of their air traffic controllers were working at a hub in Long Island, in a town called Westbury, New York. But last summer, the FAA decided to relocate a bunch of those people from Long Island to Philadelphia.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
And in order to safely relocate those people to Philadelphia and make sure that they had the technology to do their jobs there, the FAA did sort of a workaround for the data feeds that go from Newark Airport to Philadelphia.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
So when you have planes in the air at Newark and you have flight plans and vectors, meaning the angles at which airplanes come into the airport, that all represents a whole lot of data. So the data that's generated from Newark Airport typically would be sent via copper wiring or broadband to the air traffic control hub. Right.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
So rather than route that data straight from Newark to Philadelphia, the FAA, for whatever reason, decided we'll keep our feed from Newark to Long Island, and then we'll send it from Long Island to Philadelphia. In and of itself, with fast transmission in this day and age, that shouldn't be a problem. But technology experts tell me it has created latency issues like very slight delays.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
And it's also made that Philadelphia data feed vulnerable to other hiccups in the system.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Yeah, that's right. And we saw a manifestation of that potential for failure last September 2nd. And what happened was that several of the radarscopes in the Philadelphia location where the newer controllers were working, froze up.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
So there have been three outages that we know of, including the one that occurred last week. Wow. The first one I'll come back to in a second, because it's sort of a horse of a different color. But the one I was mentioning... And it resulted from the sort of pit stop idea that we were talking about. It essentially related to the fact that this data was traveling a little bit further.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
And the data stream that feeds into these Newark air traffic controller screens was affected by data issues at a different local airport that were sort of overstressing the system. And what was the third outage that you mentioned that you said was kind of different? So that one was a more significant disruption. It occurred last August 27th.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
And what happened there was that an outside vendor working for the FAA accidentally clipped or unplugged literally a feed of data. Oh, my God. Yeah. So you could hear the air traffic controller who was dealing with the downed technology saying, attention all aircraft, radar contact is lost. Radar contact is lost when you listen to the audio recordings from that day.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Yeah, I remember somebody who was around at the time told me they don't even necessarily care what the exact causes are of this outage, whether it's someone with a big pair of scissors or someone, you know, knocking a plug out of the wall. Regardless, this should be the Fort Knox of aviation data.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
In other words, this should be an impenetrable system with multiple backups that is never permitted to fail.
The Daily
A Frightening Moment to Fly
Yeah, Rachel, the technology really is problematic. But where you have a toxic combination here is when you throw in the fact that Newark has already been struggling for a while now with chronic staffing shortages. And all of that is impeding these controllers' ability to function.