A second radar outage in two weeks at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) has caused alarm after air traffic controllers were reportedly blindsided for 90 seconds.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that at 03:55 on May 9, 2025, systems designed to help pilots land commercial aircraft were temporarily lost.
“There was a telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport airspace,” a spokesperson for the FAA said.
The incident came less than two weeks after air traffic controllers at the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) lost access to the Newark Airport guiding systems on April 28, 2025.
Chuck Schumer, New York’s Senator and the Senate Democratic Leader, criticized President Donald Trump after learning about the latest outage.
We just learned that there was ANOTHER outage with the FAA in Newark this morning.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) May 9, 2025
Enough.
Trump needs to get it together now and stop risking safety so DOGE can play government.
“We just learned that there was ANOTHER outage with the FAA in Newark this morning. Enough. Trump needs to get it together now and stop risking safety so DOGE can play government,” wrote Senator Schumer.
US Representative Rick Larsen echoed criticism and said: “Problems with our system have crossed administrations, but safety improvements cannot span generations. We need action now.”
The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed “there was a glitch in the system” caused by the same issue on April 28, 2025.
Following that incident the Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that the FAA was adding “three new, high-bandwidth telecommunications connections between the New York-based STARS and the Philadelphia TRACON”.
It was also announced that the agency was “deploying a temporary backup system to the Philadelphia TRACON that will provide redundancy during the switch to a more reliable fiberoptic network”.
A delay reduction meeting into the latest incident at Newark Airport will be held on May 14, 2025.
2 comments
Where were the calls for Biden to “Get It Together” for the last 4 years? This is just more fake news.
Frank, kudo’s on your comment but this is an issue spanning far more than the last 2 administrations. Funding for the FAA has typically been based on ‘blood’. While the NTSB makes hundreds of “recommendations”, many of which are way, way out in left field with regards to actually making flying ‘safer’, 99.9999% of those in the aviation industry are always safety driven, without need for idiotic regulations or punitive measures. The issues being seen now are from years of an ongoing lack of maintenance and upgrades to the entire US aviation system as a whole, not airlines/aircraft. Airlines have been and continue to spend billions on new equipment, under mandate by any number of aviation jurisdictions, but the infrastructure to allow all of that metal to move, safely, for the most part, is still rooted in late 70’s and 80’s equipment and architecture. To truly move forward to a NextGen ATC system will require the lights to be ‘shut off’, switch over to the new system and then flip them back on. Problem is no one (political party) will agree to that on their watch.