Transportation Secretary Tells NBC He’ll Scale Back Newark Flights – Just as Another Outage Happens | Video

Flights in and out of Newark Liberty International “one hundred percent” need to be scaled back, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told NBC on Sunday morning – just as the glitch-plagued airport experienced another service outage over aging communications tech.

In the past two weeks, the busy airport has experienced technical failures, staffing shortages and operational disruptions that have hobbled schedules and raised safety concerns. Duffy joined “Meet the Press” on Sunday, where he told host Kristen Welker steps had already been taken to scale down the number of flights at EWR.

Meanwhile, over at the airport in question, a telecommunications failure led to a 45-minute ground stop, affecting over 170 flights. Similar outages occurred on April 28 and again Friday.

“So we actually have brought down the number of airplanes that come in and leave Newark because, listen, our mission is safety. And so – yeah, I hate delays,” Duffy said, as delays and cancellations were underway. “I hate cancellations. And I hate [that] families who come with little kids that are sitting there for four hours.”

Duffy said the slowdown will buy time to address the issues before they get worse.

“We lost a few controllers who were stressed out by the first connectivity that we lost last week,” he said. “And so we have less controllers working the Newark airspace right now. And, you know, we’re having these – these glitches in the system. So we slow it down and keep people safe. That’s what we do.”

The FAA later said the Sunday issue began at an offsite guidance control facility.

“There was a telecommunications issue at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport airspace,” the FAA said in a statement. “The FAA briefly slowed aircraft in and out of the airport while we ensured redundancies were working as designed.”

Duffy added that though Newark has been making the news of late, he’s “concerned about the whole airspace.”

“The equipment that we use, much of it we can’t buy parts for new. We have to go on eBay and buy parts if one part goes down,” he said. “You’re dealing with really old equipment. We’re dealing with copper wires, not fiber, not high-speed fiber. And so this is – this is concerning. Is it safe? Yes, we have redundancies, multiple redundancies in place to keep you safe when you fly. But we should also recognize we’re seeing – we’re seeing stress on an old network, and it’s time to fix it.”

Despite those old parts, Duffy added that the US is “the safest airspace, for sure, and traveling by air is way safer than any other mode of transportation.”

The Trump administration will need “three to four years” to build the infrastructure needed, and will begin with Newark first — but there’s still a lingering concern.

“But air traffic controllers, we’re 3,000 short on air traffic control,” Duffy said. “I can’t snap my fingers and bring in these highly-skilled air traffic controllers. All of this is going to take time.”

Watch the interview with Sean Duffy in the video above.

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