Newark Liberty International Airport briefly lost touch with the world early Friday.
The outage that prevented air traffic controllers from knowing which planes were in the air took place at 3:55 a.m. and lasted for 90 seconds, the Federal Aviation Administration said, according to ABC.
The FAA pointed to a “telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display at Philadelphia TRACON Area C,” the facility that covers the Newark airspace. Newark is one of the nation’s busiest airports.
Air traffic control systems at Newark went dark last week for between 60 and 90 seconds. During that time, controllers could not talk to aircraft.
“There was a glitch in the system this morning, especially at Newark airport,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, according to a video posted to YouTube.
“As you all know, I spoke to the Department of Transportation. That glitch was caused by the same telecoms and software issues that were raised last week. Everything went back online after the brief outage, and there was no operational impact,” Leavitt said.
“DOT and the FAA are working to address this technical issue tonight to prevent further outages, as well as install new fiber from Newark Airport to Philadelphia. And the goal is to have the totality of this work done by the end of the summer,” she said.
According to The New York Times, one controller urged the pilot of a FedEx plane to have the company do something about upgrading equipment.
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“FedEx 1989, I’m going to hand you off here — our scopes just went black again,” the controller said. “If you care about this, contact your airline and try to get some pressure for them to fix this stuff.”
One plane was told during the outage not to descend because the controller would not know where it was.
As noted by ABC, the Department of Transportation said it is seeking to replace the “antiquated” system currently in place with a “state-of-the-art” alternative.
Changes include “new fiber, wireless and satellite technologies,” as well as “installing new modern hardware and software.”
The agency also plans to replace 618 old radars and build six new air traffic control centers, the Transportation Department said.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said it could take three to four years to have the full system in place.
Duffy said the Biden administration was too busy with DEI projects to fix what needed fixing.
Celebrating Transit Equity Day. Chairing the Equity Council. Stopping racist roads. Building bike paths. Funding studies on gender non-conforming people.
This is the crap Pete Buttigieg focused on instead of fixing the problems with Newark and our entire air traffic control…
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) May 6, 2025
“Celebrating Transit Equity Day. Chairing the Equity Council. Stopping racist roads. Building bike paths. Funding studies on gender non-conforming people. This is the crap Pete Buttigieg focused on instead of fixing the problems with Newark and our entire air traffic control system,” Duffy wrote on X.
“Buttigieg and Biden didn’t lift a finger to fix our air traffic control system. They knew about this mess, but they were too busy celebrating equity and the green new deal. Buttigieg put lives in danger. We’ve got a plan to fix it,” he wrote.
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