'Scopes just went black again' as Newark air traffic hit by new outage

A facility that guides air traffic in and out of Newark airport suffered a new 90-second communications outage early on Friday, the second in two weeks that prompted an air traffic controller to complain "Scopes just went black again" to a nearby FedEx flight.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the telecommunications outage impacted communications and radar displays at Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control that guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey around 3:55 am ET on Friday and lasted about 90 seconds.

The agency said late on Friday it plans to meet with major airlines on Wednesday about potential temporary cuts in flights at Newark Liberty to address recent major disruptions due to equipment and staffing issues.

The latest incident highlights the air traffic control network's aging infrastructure and comes a day after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy proposed spending billions of dollars to fix it over the next three to four years.

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said there was "a glitch in the system" caused by the same telecom issue that caused the prior incident. She said the goal is to address the technical issue later on Friday "to prevent further issues".

Air traffic control audio recordings and flight records suggested there had been another brief Friday outage within 20 minutes of the 3:55 am event. The FAA did not reply to request for comment on that.

A recording of an exchange obtained by Reuters discussed the 3:55 am outage with a pilot. "FedEx 1989, I’m going to hand you off here, our scopes just went black again," the controller told the pilot. "If you care about this, contact your airline and try to get some pressure for them to fix this stuff." The pilot responded he was sorry to hear of the outage.

FedEx said the plane made it safely from Newark to Boston without any issue. "We appreciate the professionalism and actions of our crew members and the controllers in safely addressing this challenging situation," the company said in a statement.

A little while later, the controller told a Flexjet flight that the tower "just had another brief radar outage". The airplane continued into nearby Teterboro, according to FlightRadar24.

IMPACT ON UNITED AIRLINES

The FAA said on Wednesday it was taking immediate steps to address ongoing problems that have disrupted hundreds of flights at Newark since April 28, especially of United Airlines, the largest carrier at the airport located just outside New York City.

United said on Friday the FAA outage impacted its Newark operation but did not elaborate. It has sharply cut flights and wants the FAA to impose new limitations on Newark flights to address ongoing delays.

"Decades of failing to properly invest in the system has prevented good-faith efforts to make technology upgrades and bolster the staffing of our nation’s hard-working air traffic controllers," United CEO Scott Kirby said in a Fox News op-ed on Friday.

The FAA said it is increasing air traffic controller staffing, adding three new, high-bandwidth telecommunications connections and deploying a temporary backup system to the Philadelphia TRACON during the switch to a more reliable fiber-optic network.

Duffy said on Thursday that the FAA had two redundant lines and "both are up and working now" at Philadelphia. The FAA did not immediately answer why the backup did not prevent Friday's incident.