United Airlines planes were like, totally flying all over the place at Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey on Feb. 20, 2025. The big boss man, CEO Scott Kirby, was all like “we gotta cancel 35 roundtrip flights a day because things are getting cray-cray over here.” Apparently, thousands of peeps were stuck waiting for hours this week, and it’s all because the air traffic controllers are ghosting us and the FAA’s tech is on the fritz.
So, like, 10% of United’s daily flights at Newark are getting the boot. That’s a lot of flights, man. More than 300 flights were delayed as of Friday, and over 1,400 other flights got messed up earlier in the week. FlightAware was all over it, tracking all the delays and cancellations like it’s nobody’s business.
Kirby was all like “it sucks to cut our schedule even more, but we gotta do it to keep our customers happy.” The cuts are starting this weekend, so if you got plans, you might wanna check your flight status, just sayin’.
Apparently, 20% of the air traffic controllers at Newark dipped out recently because the tech was acting up. Kirby was like “this place has been short-staffed for ages, and now we’re up a creek without a paddle.” The FAA was all “yeah, there’s some staffing issues at Newark,” which is like, no duh.
Kirby wants the FAA to put the brakes on the number of flights coming in and out of Newark. He’s all like “we gotta have some restrictions up in here, like they do at LaGuardia and Reagan.” Last year, the FAA moved some air traffic controllers from Newark to Philly to try and ease the congestion, but it looks like that didn’t really help much.
The FAA and the Transportation Department didn’t have much to say about Kirby’s comments. But Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was all over it, visiting the Philly facility and talking about fixing the tech problems. He wants a whole new air traffic control system, and he wants it like yesterday.
The air traffic controllers’ union didn’t have much to say about the whole situation. Kirby had a chat with Secretary Duffy and gave props to the Trump administration for promising to upgrade the air traffic control system in the U.S.
United was all “yo, the FAA’s tech problems, runway construction, and windy weather messed us up big time.” They had to divert like 21 flights, which is a major bummer. Newark is like one of the busiest airports in the country, and Kirby has been complaining about not having enough air traffic controllers for ages. They’ve been cutting flights left and right because of all the delays, blaming the same stuff every time.
The Transportation Department came in hot with some incentives to help with the air traffic controller shortage. It’s been a problem for a while, especially with the training delays thanks to Covid-19. United is being cool about it, waiving fees for customers caught up in the Newark mess.
So yeah, things are pretty wild over at Newark right now. Hopefully, they can get their act together soon and get those flights back on track. But who knows, man. It’s all up in the air at this point.
