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Newark Liberty International Airport’s largest tenant, United Airlines, and its CEO, Scott Kirby, have understandably been the loudest voices railing against the air traffic control staffing and equipment chaos at one of the airline’s largest domestic hubs.
In the wake of a serious technology outage on April 28 that brought the airport to a standstill, 10,971 United passengers collectively suffered 64,570 hours of delay through May 6 alone. Kirby has repeatedly put pressure on the Federal Aviation Administration for equipment and staffing issues, most recently calling the need for his airline to further voluntarily cut schedules “disappointing.”
That rhetoric may serve a secondary purpose: pressuring the FAA to return Newark to a higher level of slot control that could take the load off of the airport, but simultaneously create a competitive advantage for United.
Essential Reading: Making sense of Newark Airport’s chronic chaos
Last year, United was a vocal supporter of the agency’s controversial effort to relocate Newark controllers out of the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control facility on Long Island to Philadelphia. The move was intended to solve the sector’s decades-long staffing shortfall, but has since been the cause of many of the recent equipment outages as hastily set-up equipment failed to prove reliable.
“From our perspective the FAA has managed this transition well,” United said in an August 27, 2024 statement issued to The Air Current. “We applaud FAA and the controllers who have moved for their work to address this challenge… We anticipated short-term challenges such as delays, but this effort is worth it to help resolve a key issue in one of the busiest airspaces in the country.”
United claims it still supports the broader move, but has simultaneously been heaping criticism on the FAA for its overall staffing issues, with Kirby writing in March that “the American traveling public deserves much better” than air traffic control-induced delays. Now, the airline is resurfacing its own proposal to get Newark back on track.
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