Newark ATC issues....
 

I know we have some insiders here. The recent events seem scary .... I've flown in/out of there a bunch years ago... once to buy my Carrera ;).

Would y'all avoid it now ... odds are slim & none ... but...

What say ye....

Was there last summer for a connecting flight....all went well with that.

I did notice how old and outdated the concourse I was in looked. The gate had seats for less than half of us waiting and it was narrow and very crowded. (and hot)

With the news lately...I would avoid it.

As someone who flies out of there a lot, I can say I absolutely despise that place on a good day. Thee worst airport.

.

+1 but apparently the issue was in Philly.

New Terminal A is great but the other two are definitely showing their age.

Flying out on Thursday. I intended to fly out of EWR but last week I realized that I grabbed a flight out of JFK by accident. I called to change the flight to EWR but they wanted another $700 on a ticket I originally paid $650 for so I stuck with JFK.

Seems like a happy accident now. I’ll gladly spend 90 minutes getting to JFK over 4-5 hours or more waiting for EWR to figure it out.

I was thinking about that this morning. Why no noise about PHL?

I know EWR has a runway out of service for construction but is there that little bandwidth in their flight patterns? The construction isn’t emergency work, it was planned.

Had 30 years as atc, extending the mandatory retirement past 56 will not be much help.
You really have had your fill of the career on the boards after 30 years.
Remember the days when the radios went out and I was clearing commercial jets to land and take off with a light gun. That’s a little hairy.
If the radar goes out there is non radar separation minimums that require quadruple the normal radar separation minimums.
At least now days with flow control they can create ground stops and gate holds so aircraft take the delays on the ground at point of departure instead of circling the destination airport.http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1746544779.jpg

I was referring to the "loss of radar"/communication or whatever just happened in Newark... sounded like the ATC was driving blind yet they performed exceptionally under duress and chaos?

Kudos to them!

edited: Reported: A 90 second period where ATC lost communications with air traffic.

I think most reports are updating the black out duration as 30 seconds.

Chat GPT answered my question above. EWR ATC is Philadelphia based but not the same group that controls PHL.

FAA Next GEN
Ongoing since 2005

https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/background/accomplishments

Look at that scope & complexity of the stuff they manage, time to privatize IMO.

So at 350 knots every 30 seconds an aircraft covers 3 miles.
So all the aircraft in the EWR radar sectors in 30 to 90 seconds covered 3 to 10 miles with out separation ensured.
I prefer separation ensured.
I did hear an EWR ATC tell an airborne pilot requesting services "squawk vfr get off my frequency I don't know where you are".

Up here we train for Loss of Radar every year. We also have a back up surveillance screens if the mains go down, running on a different system.

Not a whole lot we can do if we loose all radios. But at our approach control unit we have Main receivers and transmitter, (remote) back up receivers and transmitters (remote), emergency receivers and transmitters on our building, and if all else fails, we have GA aircraft radios radios that are not reliant on the power in the building.

In the event of a radar/surveillance loss, the first thing we do is establish vertical separation, to the extent possible. 1000 feet between aircraft.

Cheers

I read where 10 or 15 ATC went on leave due to trauma of the radar and comms s going out. They have 45 days to regroup, see therapist, etc.

I don’t know much about ATC, but would that have really been a traumatic event, that 15 or so went on leave? Obviously, it was stressful.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XnBH9oQU8QU?si=TDpgjO7ZnIKlqAoE" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

That would be the position of the FAA.
They think you can only get hurt if a radar scope falls on you.
Not only is the moment stressful but it is not easy to return to work if you can’t trust the equipment.
As an atc that has ptsd I can tell you I know many coworkers that have had ptsd from atc incidents.
It can be sudden or accumulative.
At a big or little airport you can suffer ptsd.
I’ve seen a supervisor have a near miss over the airport, he unplugged his headset walked downstairs and we never saw him again.
You should never question someone’s ptsd.

Three+ hour gate hold in SEA for our EWR flight last Saturday……

Morning tv news out of Grand Rapids...the airport (GRR) had 3 diff flights to EWR on the board. All were delayed.

I don’t think this is a new thing. The John Candy movie “Summer Rental” released in 1985 starts with him having a breakdown because he thought he lost an airplane.

I’ve always understood it to be an extremely stressful job.

It ain't just EWR where there is a problem

^^^^ Yep ... that's what they were saying... sorta scary imo... even if odds are slim... WTF? :(