A dude was standing outside Terminal C with the airport control tower in the background at Newark Liberty International Airport, in Newark, New Jersey on May 6, 2025. The guy apparently works for Getty Images, snapping pics and whatnot. So, like, air traffic controllers who guide planes in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport had a bit of a hiccup, ya know? They lost radar and communication with aircraft before dawn on Friday in another 90-second outage, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. It went down around 3:55 a.m. ET, which is pretty early if you ask me. I mean, who’s even up at that time?
The FAA said that the outage wasn’t a big deal because there aren’t as many planes flying around overnight. So, like, it wasn’t as chaotic as that other outage on April 28. That one caused all sorts of travel nightmares for days. Several controllers even took time off because they were stressed out from that April incident. Can’t really blame them, right? The FAA mentioned that staffing levels were already low at the Philadelphia facility where controllers work, which oversees planes at Newark airport. So, they had to slow down the airport’s traffic. Talk about a headache, am I right?
Both the April incident and Friday’s outage left controllers unable to talk to the planes and their radar screens were basically useless. It’s like trying to drive blindfolded — not a good idea. Just saying. But hey, on Thursday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced some big plans. He wants to overhaul some old stuff and upgrade the technology used by controllers. They handle about 45,000 flights a day in the U.S. That’s a whole lot of planes in the sky, if you ask me.
Aviation-industry groups and labor unions thought the proposal was pretty cool. They said Congress should throw in at least $31 billion over the next three years for improvements. That’s a lot of dough, right? It includes $12.5 billion from a House spending proposal last month for air traffic control modernization and hiring more controllers. Looks like they’re trying to get their act together, finally.
I’m not really sure why all this matters, but hey, maybe it’s just me. It seems like they’re trying to fix some pretty major issues, so that’s a good thing, right? Let’s hope they get everything sorted out soon because no one wants to deal with more flight delays and chaos. Fingers crossed everything runs smoothly from now on. And that’s the latest scoop from this newbie journalist.
