Another radar outage at the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) has triggered flight disruptions at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) on May 11, 2025, marking the third failure in two weeks.
In a statement the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that there was a new “telecommunications issue” at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark airport airspace.
“The FAA briefly slowed aircraft in and out of the airport while we ensured redundancies were working as designed. Operations have returned to normal,” the FAA statement read.
In contrast to earlier outages at Philadelphia’s TRACON, the most recent incident was due to a brief failure of a backup system, which caused a 45-minute ground stop at the airport, as reported by FAA air traffic advisories.
Multiple flights were affected, with data from FlightAware stating that there were 39 cancellations and 100 delays at Newark airport on May 11, 2025.
At the time of writing on May 12, 2025, 39 flights have been canceled and seven have been delayed.
The recent incident follows a 90-second disruption on May 9, 2025, which led Senator Chuck Schumer of New York to criticize President Donald Trump, stating, “Trump needs to get it together now and stop risking safety.”
US DOT to cut back on flights at Newark airport
During an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on May 11, 2025, US Department of Transport (DOT) Secretary Sean Duffy said: “What we’re having is some telecom issues, we are also having some glitches in our software.”
“As the information comes in, it is overloading some of our lines and the system goes down. Specifically at Newark, we believe we’re going to have up and running in short order, we’re going to be able to fix that glitch,” he added.
Duffy also announced plans to cut back on flights at Newark airport for the next few weeks due to the ongoing outages. He said he will meet with all airlines operating from Newark to discuss the reductions, which will vary, with more cuts to be made in the afternoons when international flight arrivals make the airport busier.
“We want to have a number of flights that if you book your flight, you know it’s going to fly, right?” he added. “That is the priority. So you don’t get to the airport, wait four hours, and then get delayed.”
In addition to the system outages, Newark airport is facing a shortage of air traffic control staff. During the NBC interview, Duffy denied claims that air traffic controllers were let go after the recent outages at the airport.
“In the safety mission of the FAA, no one was cut,” Duffy said. “We actually staffed up and hired more air traffic controllers during this time. There were probationary workers who were let go – those are employees who were there less than a year.”
