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I did notice how old and outdated the concourse I was in looked.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.

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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? :(

In a million to one situation, if you are the one, the odds don't mean a GD thing

This is 100% correct. CISM debriefings can help, but you can't "unsee" what you saw and you can't "unlive" what you lived through. Loss's of seperationg have been the end of many ATC careers. Dealing with an emergency, even ones with a good outcome, can cause untold stress. And it is a cumulative effect...

Cheers

Those ATC folks were "rock stars" under those circumstances ...

Cheers Jeff.

I think shift work is another factor regarding burn out and extending the 56 mandatory retirement.
At many 24 hour facilities controllers work 40 hours a week on rotating shifts.
Many studies have shown the best rotating shift schedule would provide the greatest time off between shifts.
Here was my schedule.
Controllers are required to have minimum 8 hours off between shifts.
Rotating shift work can be very fatiguing.

Weekends off due to my seniority.
Monday 4pm to 12am
Tuesday 2pm to 10pm
Wednesday 7am to 3pm
Thursday 6am to 2pm
Friday 12am to 8am
Doable for a young person less so for an older person.

FAA knows this compressed work week was hard on controllers.
We would get surveys occasionally with questions like after your 12am to 8am midnight shift have you every been in a car accident leaving the atc facility?
Funny can’t drive safely but just worked the 3am air freighter arrival rush.

No one does this but it was suggested.
Say you had seniority and were fortunate to have weekends off, if so this was a schedule that studies found had the greatest time off between shifts and would be best for controller health.

Off Saturday
Off Sunday
Monday 12am to 8am
Tuesday 6am to 2pm
Wednesday 7am to 3pm
Thursday 3pm to 11pm
Friday 4pm to 12am.
So your weekend would start Saturday 12am and end Sunday at midnight.

On top of that half hour lunches so if you went out for lunch you had to drink fast. lol

Big part of the problem is the ancient computers they are using to run the system.

Seems like there was an evil, childish demon who was doing something about this 5 or 6 years ago, then the grown ups took over.

We run a 17/11 rotation twice every 56 days. We are trying to got back to the 5/4 we had 20 years ago.

But we "short change" as well. And we are so short staffed that the operation can only function when 60+% of the staff work the maximum amount of overtime every 56 days, which is an additional 112 hours. Many work 8 on 1 off, and/or have multiple 12 hour shifts in work cycle to help out.

We have new "fatigue rules" for our working schedules. But they are not followed. It is actually a bit of a joke...

I work very little OT, and am fine with it. Some guys/gals love the extra cash.

Cheers

Since some of you guys have intimate knowledge of the ATC world - would this problem of handling aircraft not be an opportunity for the application of AI? It seems AI could much better process all the variables at the same time and really aid the human controllers.

I know there are horror stories of AI applications going awry, but we use it here in situations where humans really struggle (trying to process lots of data real-time) and it is a surprisingly good tool. I wouldn't advocate for eliminating the human ATC presence - just augmenting.

On Monday evening, there were as few as three air traffic controllers at a Philadelphia radar center scheduled each hour to guide planes that were flying into and out of Newark Liberty International Airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

That's despite a target of 14 air traffic controllers for that time period, per an agreement between the FAA and the air traffic controllers union, The New York Times reported. NPR has not independently confirmed that report. The FAA did not reply to NPR's question about the agreement, and the union did not reply to multiple requests to comment.

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/13/nx-s1-5396838/newark-airport-three-radar-controllers-monitored-airspace-faa

I avoided it too.
Sucked half of the OT would got to taxes.

You still working traffic Jeff?
Eligible for retirement now?
Retirement at 50 is only a perk if you use it. :)
17 years retired this month.

LOL ... there is profound wisdom in this quote!

17 for me too... this month ;)

No ATC stress tho'.... Fitty = Adios for sure...

Congratulations!
That was tough when the meltdown happened a few months after we retired.
We live under a 10 mile right base so can still watch and hear the SAN arrivals. lo

FAA needs to hire like they did after the PATCO strike.
They hired thousands in a short time. Me included, 2 weeks out of the Navy was working for the FAA .

What facilities did you work at?
There have been a few atc post here.
4 year Navy atc 26 year at SAN tower atc.

Cheers

No, no, no ... you guys are skilled .... I was just an IT geek in corporate america ;).

LOL .... Weren't you Sandy Eggo?