Airlines Are Blaming Staffing Issues for the Delays Affecting Newark Airport

Flying out of Newark Airport at the moment is even more difficult than usual. Over 270 flights have been delayed already, and the Federal Aviation Administration is suggesting that the delays to flights coming into the airport are in part because of staffing issues with air traffic controllers.

Some stories have even suggested that as much as 20 percent of the air traffic controller staff at Newartk "walked off the job," although many of those stories don't offer much explanation for why they might have done so. Here's what we know about why they might have left their jobs.

The FAA has listed staffing issues as the reason for the delays in Newark but has refused to provide any additional information about the nature of the problems. On May 2, the CEO of United Airlines said in a statement that “over 20 percent of the FAA controllers for EWR (Newark Liberty International Airport) walked off the job.” Although this is the story that is getting reposted everywhere, some insiders are suggesting that the shortage is far more complicated than that.

According to air traffic controllers who are leaving comments on Reddit, the shortage was instead caused by a conflagration of terrible circumstances. This chain of events began when the FAA moved controllers who work in Newark and move them from Long Island to Philadelphia. The radar data that these controllers use was not transferred, though, and is instead being forwarded from Long Island.

The forwarding process, which is happening for both radar data and radio communications, has led to several lengthy outages for one or the other at various points in time. As a result, air traffic controllers have had to operate under circumstances that are both stressful and dangerous. That stressful work environment apparently led several of them to take leaves of absence for their own mental health, which is something they are contractually allowed to do.

As a result, these towers are understaffed and flights cannot come in with the same regularity as they once could. Notably, though, none of this is in the reporting, which has instead chosen to run with a quote that seems to suggest that controllers simply didn't want to show up for work.

Under the best of circumstances, working as an air traffic controller is a high-stakes job, and it seems these people were not working under ideal conditions.

It's also true that there has been a chronic shortage of air traffic controllers across the country. CNN is reporting that the FAA is rolling out new incentive packages that are designed to keep air traffic controllers from retiring and encourage new controllers to enter the Academy.

In the short term, though, that's not going to solve the problem at Newark, which seems to be less the fault of individual air traffic controllers and more the fault of a system that's under immense strain. Here's hoping it doesn't break.