More from the analysis ...
... There are too many planes in the sky. In 2024, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) supervised nearly 16.8 million flights in American airspace -- half a million more than the year prior.
To manage all of those airplanes, however, the FAA uses an air traffic control system designed in the early 1990s -- when features like trackballs and color monitors were new, and air traffic controllers handled less than half as many flights every year.
Like many government agencies, the FAA has faced chronic budget constraints and poor oversight in the ensuing two decades. Not only is its system functionally obsolete; it's also badly understaffed. Too often, the agency must scramble to find the least-bad solution for its mounting problems -- and not all of these solutions are good or even safe.
One such scenario has been unfolding at Newark Liberty International Airport for the last year. And it hasn't just created delays and cancellations -- it has put people's safety at risk. ...
The strangest thing of all is that the FAA appears to have brought the problem on itself " thanks in part to endemic government issues such as underfunding and bureaucracy, but also to the agency's track record of bad risk management when it comes to modern technology.onal Airport. Getty Images
A vicious cycle
"The airspace around New York is the most complex in the world," says Michael McCormick, a former air traffic controller and current professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. Controllers in this sector manage more than 6,000 flights per day between the 30-plus airports, heliports, and seaplane bases in the area. And almost a quarter of that volume is handled by Newark TRACON.
Those controllers aren't actually located at the airport. Beginning in 1978, the FAA centralized approach and departure traffic for every airport in the greater New York City area into the N90 "super facility" in Westbury, Long Island. N90 was and still is one of the largest TRACON control facilities in the country, with 200 controllers on staff. Their colocation, along with a direct feed into the FAA's radar, satellite, and flight data system called STARS, makes operations more efficient and emergencies easier to handle. (For example, close coordination between
N90 controllers helped guide the "Miracle on the Hudson" flight to a safe landing.) ...