Radar screens at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport went black again early Friday morning.
The outage happened at 3:55 a.m. and lasted about 90 seconds, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
Air traffic controllers could be heard telling a FedEx plane that their screens went dark and then asking the aircraft to tell their company to put pressure on to get the problem fixed.
I wonder how frightened the pilots of the FedEx plane were. And, for that matter, the grievously short-staffed air traffic controllers.
In fact, I would imagine any pilots/flight staff using that airport must be terrified. I worry that this problem is likely affecting other airports across the US and it’s a matter of time before we hear of more tragic news. This is horrible and we know why things are the way they are.
Isn’t ATC one of the most stressful careers around, on a good day?
Functional air traffic is a necessity. A failing tower at a major international airport should be considered a goddamn emergency.
Definitely stressful, my dad had been a controller in the USAF. It’s where he learned to drink heavily when off duty. Of course, they were stationed in Greenland, so there wasn’t anything else to do.
I saw an article saying the controllers were taking time off for trauma from the first incident
That one was during the day IIRC, there were many more planes in the air. This one at least happened overnight, with less traffic.
Yeah but night time and IMC (clouds) is when ATC is needed the most.
DOGE and the Trump admin fucking shit up.
In the early days of the regime, the federal government fired thousands of ATCs. I’m talking of course about Regan.
MAGA did not fall out of a coconut tree.
While I hate Trump as much as the next guy, this has been brewing for literal decades. And of course Trump is making a serious catastrophe worse too.
It has been in a bad state for a while, but they sure aren’t helping anything.
