General Discussion

May 22, 20255:00 AM ET
Joel Rose

There had been warning signs before radar and communications systems went dark at the facility that manages the airspace around Newark Liberty International Airport, according to an air traffic controller who was on duty during one of those failures.

Still, their first reaction was shock.

"It was like disbelief. And then it was just like fury, honestly, like how could they have us working this, you know?," said the controller, who works in Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which manages the airspace around Newark. They asked NPR not to use their name because they're not authorized to speak publicly and are worried about retaliation from their employer, the Federal Aviation Administration.

"We had had other outages prior to that point that demonstrated to us that our equipment was unreliable," the controller said in an interview this week. Those earlier incidents were alarming enough, the controller says, that controllers handling Newark asked the FAA to reduce the number of planes in the airspace ...

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/22/g-s1-68333/newark-air-traffic-controller-atc