Floppy discs and copper strips: Newark failures hint at looming threat of another FAA disaster



There have been multiple air traffic control communication and radar malfunctions in recent days, prompting renewed concern about risks in America's skies and on its runways.

The Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged in a series of statements that there was a telecommunications issue Friday at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, the air traffic control tower and radar facility at Philadelphia International Airport that guides aircraft into and out of Newark Liberty International Airport airspace.

Although the issue apparently lasted only 90 seconds, the FAA slowed aircraft in and out of Newark while ensuring that "redundancies were working as designed." The ground stop reportedly lasted around 45 minutes, and, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware, roughly 280 flights were delayed and 87 canceled at Newark as of late Sunday.

'We use floppy discs. We use copper wires.'

A week earlier, the FAA similarly had to slow arrivals and departures on account of "telecommunications and equipment issues at Philadelphia TRACON."

The New York Times reported that air traffic controllers working the airspace around the Newark airport lost communications with planes for nearly 30 seconds. While 10 people reportedly should have been on duty to help coordinate traffic in the Newark airspace at the time, only four controllers were at their posts.

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Photo by KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy minced no words following the late April 28 incident, stating, "The system that we're using in air traffic control is incredibly old. This system is 25, 30 years old. We use floppy discs. We use copper wires. The system that we're using is not effective to control the traffic that we have in the airspace today."

Stu Burguiere highlighted some of the technological artifacts the FAA still relies upon to regulate American airspace in his BlazeTV documentary "Countdown to the Next Aviation Disaster."

In addition to copper wires, Burguiere discussed "paper flight strips," which Reason Foundation founder Robert Poole indicated are still used to track planes.

"It comes off a little printer at the controller's workstation," explained Poole.

Blaze News previously reported that the FAA has attempted to update the paper system for over four decades, but the plans remain behind schedule and over budget.

Burguiere also took a look at a November 2023 FAA report that indicated the agency is not only using floppy discs but employing equipment so old that there are no replacement parts available.

"Beacons used to determine the location of aircraft with working transponders," the report reads. "Includes 331 units that are 28-46 years old. Many of these systems are pre-digital, and many parts are unavailable because the manufacturers no longer exist or no longer support these systems."

After characterizing the systems in place as antiquated and faulty, Duffy said, "Of course it's safe," citing the kinds of reactive measures taken in Newark and elsewhere. While confident in the safety of American travel, Duffy appears both intolerant of further delays and unwilling to leave anything to chance.

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Duffy stated that "we must get the best safety technology in the hands of controllers as soon as possible" and indicated that the Trump administration is "working to ensure the current telecommunications equipment is more reliable in the New York area by establishing a more resilient and redundant configuration with the local exchange carriers."

According to the FAA, Duffy and acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau are taking several actions to improve upon existing air traffic control systems, such as adding three high-bandwidth telecommunications connections between the New York-based Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System and the Philadelphia TRACON; replacing copper telecommunications connections with fiber-optic technology from this millennium; and deploying a temporary backup system to the Philadelphia TRACON to provide redundancy during the cable switchover.

'It has to be fixed.'

Burguiere noted in his BlazeTV documentary that the FAA was not just way behind on critical technological upgrades but dangerously understaffed at critical hubs nationwide — stressing that "with 77% of key facilities below the FAA's own staffing threshold" as of December, "our skies are becoming a ticking time bomb."

It appears that Duffy has also taken the dearth of talent at the FAA to heart. The transportation secretary and Rocheleau are apparently committed to increasing controller staffing.

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The FAA indicated that the "area in the Philadelphia TRACON that handles Newark traffic has 22 fully certified controllers and 21 controllers and supervisors in training. Ten of those 21 controllers and supervisors are receiving on-the-job training. All 10 are certified on at least one position, and two are certified on multiple positions. We have a healthy pipeline with training classes filled through July 2026."

Blaze News asked the FAA to comment about the nationwide issue of old and aging systems and the perceived problem of understaffing at the FAA and was directed to Duffy's previous statements and May 12 press conference regarding the incident at the Newark airport.

Regarding staffing, the FAA said in a statement obtained by Blaze News, "The FAA and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) collaborate to establish staffing goals for every facility, for every area in the facility, and for each shift. They update the goals yearly, and the goals are based on full staffing in the facility or area. There is a nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers, and the FAA for years has not met the staffing goal for the area that works Newark airspace."

"The persistent low staffing levels and low training success rate at New York Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON), or N90, were contributing factors to moving control of the Newark airspace to the Philadelphia TRACON in 2024," added the agency.

The airspace over Newark is far from the only domain experiencing troubles.

WAGA-TV reported that over 600 flights were delayed Monday at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on account of what officials termed a "runway equipment issue."

Duffy told NBC News Monday, "I'm concerned about the whole airspace."

"What you see in Newark is going to happen in other places across the country," continued the transportation secretary. "It has to be fixed."

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was recently asked about one of his boss' unrealistic green schemes, namely the installation of electric vehicle charging stations across the country. His answer prompted CBS' Margaret Brennan to laugh in his face.

Apparently keen to keep the laughs coming, Buttigieg subsequently blamed airline turbulence on climate change.

Only 499,992 to go

Ahead of the 2020 election, then-candidate Joe Biden promised the American people in four debates and during his CNN town hall interview that he would build half a million new charging stations across the nation if elected.

After taking the White House, Biden reiterated his promise, stating in November 2021, "We're going to build out the first-ever national network of charging stations all across the country — over 500,000 of them. ... So you'll be able to go across the whole darn country, from East Coast to West Coast, just like you'd stop at a gas station now. These charging stations will be available."

That month, the then-Democrat-controlled Congress passed a corresponding $1 trillion infrastructure package. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and 18 other Republican lawmakers, evidently unswayed by former President Donald Trump's critiques, subsequently helped Democrats pass the measure in the U.S. Senate.

Of the 1,000 billion taxpayer dollars sunk into the bill, $73 billion was designated for updating the nation's electricity grid so it could carry more renewable energy and $7.5 billion to build Biden's promised EV charging stations by 2030.

According to the EV policy analyst group Atlas Public Policy, the funding designated for the rollout should be enough for at least 20,000 charging spots and 5,000 stations.

Now years into the scheme, it appears increasingly unlikely that Biden's costly promise will materialize.

In March, the Federal Highway Administration confirmed to the Washington Post that only seven of Biden's planned 500,000 EV charging stations were operational, amounting to a total of 38 spots for drivers in Hawaii, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to charge their vehicles.

Politico noted last year that that a National Renewable Energy Laboratory study estimated the country will need 1.2 million public chargers by 2030 to meet the demand artificially created by the Biden administration's climate agenda and corresponding regulations. As of June 2023, there were roughly 180,000 chargers nationwide.

House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and other Republican lawmakers penned a February letter to Buttigieg and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, expressing concerns that "American taxpayer dollars are being woefully mismanaged."

Over the weekend, Margaret Brennan pressed the issue further in conversation with the Biden DOT secretary on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Laughable

"Let me ask you about a portion of this that I think does fall under your portfolio, and that's the charging stations you mentioned. The Federal Highway Administration says only seven or eight charging stations have been produced with a $7.5 billion investment that taxpayers made back in 2021," said Brennan. "Why isn't that happening more quickly?"

"So the president's goal is to have half a million chargers up by the end of this decade. Now, in order to do a charger, it's more than just plunking a small device into the ground. There's utility work, and this is also really a new category of federal investment."

"But we've been working with each of the 50 states," continued Buttigieg. "Every one of them is getting formula dollars to do this work."

Brennan leaned in and asked, "Seven or eight, though?"

"Again, by 2030: 500,000 chargers," responded Buttigieg.

Brennan laughed at Buttigieg's suggestion, evidently unable to conceal her disbelief in the possibility that another 499,992 chargers could be installed and operational inside the next six years.

"And the very first handful of chargers are now already being physically built. But again, that's the absolute very, very beginning stages of the construction to come," added Buttigieg.

Despite the Biden administration admittedly being at the "very, very beginning stages," it is nevertheless trying to get gas-consuming cars off the streets and replacing them with EVs that will all rely on the handful of existing charging stations.

In March, the administration announced a rule that would limit the amount of exhaust permitted from cars such that by 2032, over half of the new cars need to be so-called zero-emissions vehicles, reported the New York Times.

Keeping it light

While short on satisfactory answers, Buttigieg still had plenty of alarmism to go around.

The DOT secretary told Brennan, "The reality is the effects of climate change are already upon us in terms of our transportation. We've seen that in the form of everything from heat waves that shouldn't statistically even be possible threatening to melt the cables of transit systems in the Pacific Northwest, to hurricane seasons becoming more and more extreme, and indications that turbulence is up by about 15%."

A study published last year in Geophysical Research Letters suggested that clear-air turbulence "is predicted to become more frequent because of climate change," claiming that the strongest category of clear-air turbulence was 55% more frequent in 2020 than in 1979.

Brennan pressed Buttigieg on whether the kind of extreme turbulence experienced last week by Singapore Airlines flight SQ321, which was traveling from London to Singapore, would soon become more common in the United States.

"To be clear, something that extreme is very rare. But turbulence can happen and sometimes it can happen unexpectedly," said Buttigieg. "This is all about making sure that we stay ahead of the curve, keeping aviation as safe as it is."

The "Face the Nation" interview was slapped with a community note on X, noting that National Transportation Safety Board data "shows there is no rising trend in aircraft turbulence incidents."

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