DOT boss Sean Duffy vows to fix ‘frail system’ that caused Newark Airport air traffic control outage
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Monday blamed the Biden administration for not addressing aging airport infrastructure, which he claims contributed to the terrifying radar and communications outage at Newark Liberty International Airport last week.
“We have really old infrastructure in America,” Duffy told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. “It hasn’t been updated in the last 30-40 years.”
“This should have been dealt with in the last administration — they did nothing,” the Trump administration official charged.
Newark airport has received more than $170 million in federal funds for “runways, taxiways, safety and sustainability projects, as well as terminal, airport transit connections, and roadway projects,” since 2022.
But a fried piece of copper wire sparked a temporary radar and communications blackout for air traffic controllers overseeing the second-busiest airport in the New York metro area on April 28, leaving those in the tower “unable to see, hear, or talk to” planes in the sky, a National Air Traffic Controllers Association spokesperson said Monday.
Newark Airport has experienced hundreds of flight cancellations and thousands of delays since the disruption.
“The primary communication line went down, the backup line didn’t fire, and so for 30 seconds, we lost contact with air traffic control,” Duffy said of the incident during his appearance on “The Ingraham Angle.”
“Were planes going to crash? No, they have communication devices. They can see other air traffic,” the transportation secretary continued.
“But it’s a sign that we have a frail system in place, and it has to be fixed.”
Duffy noted that while both communication lines are now working, “less departures” will be going out of Newark “until we feel comfortable and safe that the system isn’t going to go down again.”
The former congressman said he hopes to get “all the airlines” that fly out of Newark to participate in departure reduction efforts.
Duffy pledged to fix the infrastructure problem that led to the chaos and teased an announcement coming later this week to “radically transform air traffic control operations.
“We are going to radically transform the way air traffic control looks,” Duffy said. “We’re going to build a brand new air traffic control system, from new telecom to new radars to new infrastructure.
“This has been a problem in the decades coming, and we’re going to fix it,” he vowed.
He added that President Trump “loves” talking airspace and airplanes and has “bought into” the plan set to be announced on Thursday
