The disorder at Newark Liberty International Airport might be resolved with an easy solution—although it would cause a distinct type of inconvenience for travelers aiming to utilize this New Jersey transportation center, according to aviation specialists on Monday.
Authorities must reduce the number of daily flights at the struggling airport as quickly as possible since the facility is not large enough to accommodate the heavy traffic, former Federal Aviation Administration Safety Team member Kyle Bailey informed The Post.
Nevertheless, he cautioned that the short-term discomfort caused by flights would not subside despite the closure of a runway until mid-June. The airport is grappling with a critical lack of air traffic controllers, which has particularly affected United Airlines.
“I don’t foresee an imminent solution where everything improves right away,” Bailey stated.
“They simply need to permanently reduce daily flights into the airport, permanently combined with using bigger planes.”
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“There isn’t a single solution then,” he added.
In 2024, Newark Airport, which handled almost 50 million passengers, has lately been inundated with a surge of flight cancelations and delays. This issue intensified over the last week due to the loss of several air traffic controllers.
Even United, which employs the airport as its main East Coast hub, made an announcement on Friday.
it was scrapping 35 round-trip flights each day
to safeguard customers.
On Monday, the airline gave customers an opportunity to modify their travel dates or choose a different connecting city free of charge. They justified this offer due to staffing shortages affecting air traffic control and because of poor weather conditions, as stated in a message shared with The Post by a traveler.
At minimum, five air traffic controllers handling incoming and outgoing planes at Newark airport
required as much as 45 days of “leave for trauma”
recently,
CNN reported Monday.
There were about 153 cancellations and 329 delays at the airport Monday,
according to FlightAware data
— although part of this might be due to the wet weather.
Bailey, who used to be a pilot, pointed out that although Newark qualifies as “a genuine international airport,” the facilities actually resemble those of a large domestic one.
“I believe when that airport was conceived, it wasn’t intended to manage this number of flights,” he stated.
Newark spans approximately 2,000 acres, whereas John F. Kennedy International Airport located in the neighboring borough of Queens, New York, covers an area over twice as large.
Another aviation authority, Captain Ross “Rusty” Aimer, informed The Post that Newark was not built several decades ago with the larger and more modern airplanes in mind.
“The runway design was not very effective back then and was not constructed to handle continuous operations of large commercial aircraft taking off and landing,” said the former United Airlines pilot and current CEO of Aero Consulting Experts.
He stated that using Newark is a “valid concern.”
“I’d be concerned as a pilot because you have to boost your alertness by 100%, and when the system isn’t functioning correctly, it amplifies the risk,” Aimer stated.
On the contrary, we have exceptional air traffic controllers. Once you reach that advanced stage working at locations like Newark or Kennedy airports, or Los Angeles International Airport, you’re considered among the most skilled professionals in the field.
Echoing Bailey’s view, Aimer mentioned that a short-term solution could involve reducing flights — although he cautioned that this presents a “Catch-22” situation.
“We haven’t reached the peak of summer holiday traffic, and we’re already starting to encounter these issues,” he stated.
“Aimer emphasized that government agencies must begin recruiting and training personnel at an accelerated pace,” he stated. “In addition, they should increase wages both to draw in talented individuals and due to the highly demanding nature of these roles.”
Bailey maintained that even with the disorder at Newark, safety remains unaffected.
“It’s more of a major inconvenience issue,” the expert said. “You really can’t depend on traveling from there if you need to be from point A to B.”
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