Newark Liberty International Airport saw another meltdown Sunday morning after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a ground stop at the travel hub.
The feds wrote in a notice that they issued the order because they faced a shortage of air traffic controllers in Philadelphia, where flights are directed in and out of Newark. Repeated equipment malfunctions in recent weeks have caused employees at the facility to go on trauma leave.
Sunday’s ground stop lasted about 45 minutes, and halted all takeoffs from Newark. Flights were delayed by an average of two hours and 32 minutes around 11 a.m., according to the FAA. It’s the latest in a stretch of failures that have plagued travel at the airport, which is one of the busiest in the country.
In the last two weeks, air traffic controllers lost radar and communications with planes taking off and landing on two separate occasions. Both outages lasted about 90 seconds, according to the FAA.
According to online airline tracker FlightAware, Newark faced more than 160 delays or cancellations by late Sunday morning, adding to delays that have affected tens of thousands of travelers at the airport over the past two weeks. The problems have made Newark one of the least reliable airports in the world.
During an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday morning, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said his department plans to reduce the number of flights scheduled at Newark while they assess looming infrastructure and safety concerns.
“So we actually have brought down the number of airplanes that come in and leave Newark because, listen, our mission is safety,” Duffy said. “We lost a few controllers who were stressed out by the first connectivity that we lost last week. And so we have less controllers working the Newark airspace right now. And, you know, we’re having these glitches in our system.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer said “the public is freaked out” by the problems at Newark during a press conference on Sunday. He criticized Duffy for announcing out a multi-year timetable to upgrade the equipment at the airport last week without identifying immediate solutions to fix the faulty air traffic equipment.
“The FAA must put Newark first and must put everything they’ve got into fixing Newark ASAP. This situation cannot last,” he said. “Newark is a harbinger. What happened at Newark can happen all across the country.”
