This is a headline you don’t want to read when you’re planning your summer travels, especially if your travels involve traveling to, from or through Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR).
NBC News’ Tom Costello reported that a veteran air traffic controller warned travelers, “Don’t fly into Newark. Avoid it at all costs.” You can see it at the 10-second mark in the video embedded below.
It’s no secret that EWR is one of the country’s worst airports thanks to its congestion. I try to avoid it unless I’m going to Lower Manhattan or the Westside and I almost always book morning flights to avoid afternoon bottlenecks, usually due to congestion or weather.
In fact, according to the Weather Channel, Newark Airport has the highest percentage of time delays due to weather at 62.85% thanks to snow, low clouds/fog, wind and thunderstorms. “Newark gets the nod at number one given its high percentage of all delayed minutes due to weather. In the 10 years we examined, there was an almost 2-in-3 chance a delay at Newark was due to weather, far more than any other major U.S. airport.”
The real reason Newark International has been so bad lately is because there have been repeated ground stops and delays thanks to an air traffic controller (ATC) shortage. The FAA acknowledges they’re short 3,000 controllers nationwide and United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby sent out a statement saying, “For many years, United has been very clear and vocal about the need to fix the Air Traffic Control system in EWR. While we enthusiastically support the efforts underway to permanently and structurally fix the FAA, the long-simmering FAA challenges boiled over this week.
“In the past few days, on more than one occasion, technology that FAA air traffic controllers rely on to manage the airplanes coming in and out of Newark airport failed, resulting in dozens of diverted flights, hundreds of delayed and canceled flights and worst of all, thousands of customers with disrupted travel plans. Unfortunately, the technology issues were compounded as over 20% of the FAA controllers for EWR walked off the job. Keep in mind, this particular air traffic control facility has been chronically understaffed for years and without these controllers, it’s now clear, and the FAA tells us, that Newark airport cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead.”
Some flights have been delayed between five and twelve hours. So much so that United Airlines, the airport’s main carrier, issued a travel waiver earlier in the week because of the ATC outage and currently has issued a travel waiver through today because of nasty weather. The waiver allows for voluntary changes to flights traveling to, from or through all NYC major airports (EWR, JFK, LGA) but as you can see from the FAA map below, EWR currently has a Ground Delay for departures with an average of 239 minutes. Nearby LaGuardia it’s just 123 minutes and there’s no delay at JFK.
United realizes how miserable this has been for customers so they’re “unilaterally cancelling 35 roundtrip flights per day from our Newark schedule.”
So if you’re planning to fly United out of Newark soon, be sure to check your email and better yet your flight to see if it’s still going out. And if United or another airline is offering a travel waiver, take advantage to avoid the lengthy delays. TIP: Here’s what to do during weather delays and flight cancellations. And here’s my trip report: Newark to Los Angeles in Premium Plus on United Airlines 777-200 … and yes, we were significantly delayed.
