Gillen Demands Answers from Federal Aviation Administration on Newark Airport Chaos During Congressional Hearing
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congresswoman Laura Gillen (NY-04) demanded answers from the Federal Aviation Administration on the recent chaos at Newark International Airport and the impact of the TRACON N90 relocations during a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing. Gillen expressed her deep concern about recent communications outages at Newark, including a recent communications system failure that left Newark Air Traffic Control unable to see or talk to planes in the area.
Below is a copy of her remarks as prepared for delivery and a link to the full video.
Watch the full video here.
“Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses. I’m proud to represent New York’s Fourth Congressional District on the South Shore of Long Island, which is home to New York TRACON (commonly referred to as N90). N90 plays a critical role in managing the most complex and congested airspace in the country, including LaGuardia and JFK.
“Despite the strong objections of the New York Congressional delegation, last summer, the FAA needlessly relocated 12 air traffic controllers responsible for overseeing Newark Liberty International Airport from N90 on Long Island to Philadelphia. This reckless decision not only uprooted civil servants from their families, their friends, and their lives – it put the safety of our airspace at risk.
“The FAA finalized a safety report in 2022, which clearly spelled-out major issues that could arise, including data outages resulting in loss of communications lines and surveillance support. This report classifies these risks as a ‘major hazard,’ but the FAA claimed that there was only a ‘medium’ overall risk because, in the FAA’s estimation, the likelihood of an outage was 'extremely remote.'
“Mr. Chairman, that is exactly what has happened. Twice over the last two and a half weeks, radar and communications systems that help controllers direct planes in and out of Newark failed for as long as 90 seconds at a time. This left controllers unable to see or talk to planes in the area, and led to major delays and cancellations leaving passengers stranded.
“Mr. Chairman, I’d like to enter this article from May 9th into the record. The article quotes a former air traffic controller and current professor of aviation, who calls the FAA’s calculation on the likelihood of an outage “out of step with operational reality.
The article also quotes the former Inspector General of the Department of Transportation, who accuses the FAA of “downplaying” the risk of the move, and calling the recent outages 'terrifying.'"