New York
What’s Behind the Major Delays Snarling Newark Airport?
Flying into or out of Newark Liberty International Airport has brought plenty of misery in the last week, with cancellations, delays stretching well past five hours and flight diversions that have stranded travelers far from their destinations.
Passengers are reporting on social media that they have missed flights and spent hours stuck on the tarmac aboard planes. Some are still struggling to make new travel arrangements.
The disruptions, which stretched into Friday with delays averaging over two hours, have highlighted ongoing air traffic control staffing issues. The troubles prompted United Airlines, Newark’s largest carrier, to cut nearly three dozen round-trip flights per day at the hub beginning this weekend, the carrier’s chief executive, Scott Kirby, announced on Friday.
Here’s what anyone heading to Newark Airport needs to know.
Air traffic control staffing is limiting capacity
Last summer, management of the airspace surrounding Newark shifted from New York to Philadelphia. This move, which involved relocating at least a dozen air traffic controllers, was meant to ease air traffic delays.
The Federal Aviation Administration has attributed this week’s flight disruptions at Newark to equipment failures and unspecified staffing issues at the Philadelphia air traffic control center as well as to construction on one of Newark’s runways.
These ongoing staffing issues are “effectively limiting the capacity of Newark Airport,” said Aidan O’Donnell, the general manager of New Jersey airports at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The other major New York City airports, Kennedy and LaGuardia, are managed by the New York control center.
One of Newark’s runways is closed
One of the airport’s three runways was shut down on April 15 for rehabilitation and repaving, with plans to reopen in mid-June.
This is a “very routine construction project,” said Mr. O’Donnell, and the airport had prepared for it extensively by taking steps such as scheduling fewer flights during this period.
Though the airport has two remaining open runways, the F.A.A. has underutilized one of them during the closure, Mr. O’Donnell said. “When we only have one runway that’s available, we are simultaneously landing and departing on the same runway, which is the least efficient way that traffic can be managed into and out of Newark,” he added.
The airport has more than 1,000 scheduled arrivals and departures each day, the majority of which are operated by United.
The wave of disruptions that started on Monday has only intensified
The Philadelphia control center experienced telecommunications and equipment issues on Monday, an F.A.A. spokesperson said. That led to hundreds of delays and cancellations and three dozen flight diversions that day, Mr. O’Donnell said. He added that for two hours on Monday afternoon, no flights departed from or landed at Newark.
The disruptions continued through the week as air traffic controller shortages worsened in Philadelphia. Scott Kirby, the chief executive of United Airlines, said in a letter to customers that more than 20 percent of the air traffic controllers responsible for Newark “walked off the job” this week.
Mr. Kirby added that staffing shortages at the Philadelphia control center have been a problem for years.
A spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association declined to comment.
The problems may persist for weeks or months
The next few weeks could be challenging, Mr. O’Donnell warned.
Mass flight delays and cancellations can take days to resolve, as airlines navigate getting passengers, crew and aircraft back on track. Both United and JetBlue Airways have issued flight waivers allowing travelers to rebook without incurring extra fees.
United will cut 35 out of an average of 328 round-trip flights per day from its Newark schedule starting this weekend. The airport, one of the airline’s seven hubs, is a key gateway for flying to Europe, India and the Middle East.
Without enough controllers, “Newark airport cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead,” Mr. Kirby said, adding that the flight reduction was a stopgap measure “since there is no way to resolve the near-term structural F.A.A. staffing issues.”
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‘Part of the job’
Edwin Guity was at the controls of a southbound D train last December, rolling through the Bronx, when suddenly someone was on the tracks in front of him.
He jammed on the emergency brake, but it was too late. The man had gone under the wheels.
Stumbling over words, Mr. Guity radioed the dispatcher and then did what the rules require of every train operator involved in such an incident. He got out of the cab and went looking for the person he had struck.
“I didn’t want to do it,” Mr. Guity said later. “But this is a part of the job.”
He found the man pinned beneath the third car. Paramedics pulled him out, but the man died at the hospital. After that, Mr. Guity wrestled with what to do next.
A 32-year-old who had once lived in a family shelter with his parents, he viewed the job as paying well and offering a rare chance at upward mobility. It also helped cover the costs of his family’s groceries and rent in the three-bedroom apartment they shared in Brooklyn.
But striking the man with the train had shaken him more than perhaps any other experience in his life, and the idea of returning to work left him feeling paralyzed.
Edwin Guity was prescribed exposure therapy after his train struck a man on the tracks.
Hundreds of train operators have found themselves in Mr. Guity’s position over the years.
And for just as long, there has been a path through the state workers’ compensation program to receiving substantive treatment to help them cope. But New York’s train operators say that their employer, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has done too little to make them aware of that option.
After Mr. Guity’s incident, no official told him of that type of assistance, he said. Instead, they gave him the option of going back to work right away.
But Mr. Guity was lucky. He had a friend who had been through the same experience and who coached him on getting help — first through a six-week program and then, with the assistance of a lawyer, through an experienced specialist.
The specialist prescribed a six-month exposure therapy program to gradually reintroduce Mr. Guity to the subway.
His first day back at the controls of a passenger train was on Thanksgiving. Once again, he was driving on the D line — the same route he had been traveling on the day of the fatal accident.
M.T.A. representatives insisted that New York train operators involved in strikes are made aware of all options for getting treatment, but they declined to answer specific questions about how the agency ensures that drivers get the help they need.
In an interview, the president of the M.T.A. division that runs the subway, Demetrius Crichlow, said all train operators are fully briefed on the resources available to them during their job orientation.
“I really have faith in our process,” Mr. Crichlow said.
Still, other transit systems — all of which are smaller than New York’s — appear to do a better job of ensuring that operators like Mr. Guity take advantage of the services available to them, according to records and interviews.
A Times analysis shows that the incidents were on the rise in New York City’s system even as they were falling in all other American transit systems.
An Uptick in Subway Strikes
San Francisco’s system provides 24-hour access to licensed therapists through a third-party provider.
Los Angeles proactively reaches out to its operators on a regular basis to remind them of workers’ compensation options and other resources.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has made it a goal to increase engagement with its employee assistance program.
The M.T.A. says it offers some version of most of these services.
But in interviews with more than two dozen subway operators who have been involved in train strikes, only one said he was aware of all those resources, and state records suggest most drivers of trains that strike people are not taking full advantage of them.
“It’s the M.T.A.’s responsibility to assist the employee both mentally and physically after these horrific events occur,” the president of the union that represents New York City transit workers, John V. Chiarello, said in a statement, “but it is a constant struggle trying to get the M.T.A. to do the right thing.”
new video loaded: Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid
transcript
transcript
Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid
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