Unimaginable air site visitors management (ATC) audio captures the second employees misplaced radar and radio alerts whereas guiding planes to Newark Liberty Worldwide Airport in New Jersey final week.
The April 28 outage lasted roughly 90 seconds. The Nationwide Air Visitors Controllers Affiliation confirmed the incident to Fox Information Digital, writing that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)’s operation in Philadelphia had “temporarily lost radar and communications with the aircraft under their control, unable to see, hear, or talk to them.”
The audio exhibits the preliminary moments of controllers studying of an outage at Philadelphia TRACON/ATCT.
“There is some equipment outages, so I don’t know what exactly the equipment is, but they’re having some frequency issues, and then the radar scopes are out, so they can’t have anyone depart right now,” one man is heard saying.
NEWARK AIRPORT HIT WITH NEW DELAYS, OUTAGE HEARD ON AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL AUDIO
A view of Newark Airport Might 6, 2025. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu through Getty Photographs)
“I am going to move you here because I just got told that the approach lost all the radars. Three of the four radar screens went black and they have no frequencies,” one other says.
One other man remarks, “I guess this is a serious issue because I have one more arrival, and now I have nobody else coming in back.”
The audio additionally captures controllers trying to get extra details about the outage.
“Any idea how long the departure delay is going to be?” one man asks within the audio.
“I have no idea. We’re still waiting on word from Newark TRACON,” one other shortly replies.
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Vacationers at a United Airways Holdings Inc. check-in space in Terminal C of Newark Liberty Worldwide Airport in Newark, N.J., Tuesday, Might 6, 2025. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg through Getty Photographs)
“The approach just told me that a couple of techs went in, looked at the radar scope and walked out,” a person is heard saying. “They think it’s going to be a likely delay.”
The incident predated huge delays and cancellations on the New Jersey journey hub, which has been ongoing since Thursday.
In a press release obtained by FOX Enterprise, the FAA addressed the staffing shortages which have contributed to the problem.
“While we cannot quickly replace [the controllers who have left] due to this highly specialized profession, we continue to train controllers who will eventually be assigned to this busy airspace,” the company stated Monday.
A view inside Newark Airport as vacationers face eight straight days of huge delays, United Airways canceling routes and staffing shortages in Newark, N.J., Might 6, 2025. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu through Getty Photographs)
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“When staffing or equipment issues occur, the FAA will ensure safety by slowing the rate of arrivals into the airport. We will keep the public updated as we work through these issues.”
Fox Information Digital’s Kyle Schmidbauer contributed to this report.
