A fried piece of copper wire sparked a 90-second radar and communications blackout for air traffic controllers overseeing Newark Liberty International Airport last week, a source familiar with the incident told The Post — resulting in a snarl of delays and cancelations with no end in sight.
After the April 28 failure — which left Federal Aviation Administration workers with no eyes or ears — many controllers at the Philadelphia-based center took trauma leave, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union.
United Airlines previously said 20% of FAA workers “walked off the job” following the equipment malfunction — blaming them for the delays at the airport, which is the second-busiest in the New York area.
Traumatized air traffic controllers were reportedly forced to blindly land planes at Newark airport last week. John McAdorey – stock.adobe.com“Air traffic controllers in Area C of the Philadelphia TRACON (PHL), who are responsible for separating and sequencing aircraft in and out of Newark Airport (EWR), temporarily lost radar and communications with the aircraft under their control, unable to see, hear, or talk to them,” an NATCA spokesperson said in a statement Monday.
At least five employees took leave under the Federal Employees Compensation Act, which covers all federal employees that are physically injured or experience a traumatic event on the job, according to CNN.
Newark airport has experienced more than 400 cancelled flights and nearly 2,000 delays since Friday.
Passengers check the departures board at United Airlines Terminal C at Newark Airport, photographed on May 5, 2025. Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York PostAt a press conference Monday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called for an Inspector General investigation into the travel nightmare at an airport which served 49 million travelers last year.
“The technology is old and must be updated. One of the things that happened at Newark is a copper wire burnt. Why are we using copper wire in 2025? Have they heard of fiber?” the Senate minority leader said.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also pinned the glut of delays at Newark airport on the outdated air traffic management system.
The outage was blamed on a faulty copper wire. Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Post“We use floppy disks. We use copper wires,” he said. “The system that we’re using is not effective to control the traffic that we have in the airspace today.”
In a letter to customers, United CEO Scott Kirby said Newark airport’s air traffic control center — which was moved to Philadelphia last summer in an effort to ease congestion at other New York-area airports — has been “chronically understaffed for years,” and also pointed to the technology failure as the culprit for the cascading delays.
He announced United — which makes up around 75% of Newark’s flight traffic — was removing 35 daily roundtrip flights from the schedule, claiming 20% of Newark’s air traffic controllers “walked off the job” as a result of the failure, a characterization NATCA flatly denied.
