If you subscribe to my newsletter, then you know that last week I advised readers to avoid Newark Airport at all costs after an air traffic controller raised safety concerns at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport. Things are so bad at EWR that Secretary Sean Duffy, who began his TV career on MTV’s reality show The Real World and also appeared on Road Rules All Stars, where he met his wife Rachel Campos-Duffy, admitted yesterday on The David Webb Show that he switched her flight from EWR to LGA. “My wife was flying out of Newark tomorrow. I switched her flight to LaGuardia,” he said.
Trump’s Transportation Secretary after saying that Newark Airport was safe to fly from: “My wife was flying out of Newark tomorrow. I switched her flight to LaGuardia”
— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) May 12, 2025 at 12:34 PM
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich called Duffy out on social media. “Reminder: when Sean Duffy was a congressman, he and other Republicans voted against upgrading air traffic control systems. Now, he’s trying to blame those systems for Newark airport’s outages while claiming DOGE’s cuts of critical support staff at the FAA had nothing to do with it.”
A follower chimed in with a pointed comment: “You forgot to mention how he is rescheduling his wife’s flights from Newark to other airports. The Sec of Transportation won’t let his own wife through an airport. Let that sink in.”
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According to CNN, Duffy is shifting the blame to former President Joe Biden’s administration. “I think it is clear that the blame belongs with the last administration,” he said during a press conference at the DOT headquarters. “Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden did nothing to fix the system that they knew was broken.”
According to the New York Times: “As few as three air traffic controllers were scheduled to work on Monday evening at the facility guiding planes to and from Newark Liberty International Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said, far fewer than the target of 14 controllers for most of those hours. The staffing crisis added strain to an already troubled aviation system, with flights to Newark delayed by as much as seven hours on Monday.”
NYT: Newark Airport had 3 controllers on duty when the goal Is 14 https://t.co/kB1PWRZ0NS
— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) May 13, 2025
Seven hours is insane, but the old adage still applies. Better to be safe than sorry.
There’s no doubt our air traffic control system needs an overhaul, especially at Newark. But one thing is clear: If an air traffic controller is warning about safety at Newark and the Secretary of Transportation rerouted his own wife to a different airport, you might want to consider doing the same.
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