The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has imposed strict limits on the number of planes that can take off and land at Newark Liberty International Airport after a spate of incidents that have sparked fears over airliner safety at the busy New Jersey airport.
The restrictions are being brought in with immediate effect after several weeks of discussions with airlines that use Newark and will run through October 25, 2025.
In an interim order published on Tuesday, the FAA said that the maximum hourly rate will be capped at 28 departures and 28 arrivals until construction work on one of the runways has been completed.
If the work goes to schedule, daily construction should be completed by June 15.
At that point, the cap will be raised to 34 arrivals and 34 departures per hour. However, construction work will still be taking place on Saturdays through October 25, so the lower cap will apply.
The construction work has made Newark’s airfield busier than usual, although many of the airport’s challenges have been caused by ongoing staffing issues at a key air traffic control center in Philadelphia that manages the airspace around Newark.
Technology issues have also blighted air traffic control systems at Newark, making the need to impose limitation rates on arrivals and departures even more important.
“Our goal is to relieve the substantial inconvenience to the traveling public from excessive flight delays due to construction, staffing challenges, and recent equipment issues, which magnify as they spread through the National Airspace System,” commented Acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau after the interim order was enacted.
The order comes just days after Rocheleau met with airline leaders for sever major carriers that operate out of Newark, including Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Spirit Airlines and Allegiant Air, as well as Newark’s biggest airline, United.
The interim order mirrors the arrival and departure rates that were tabled during the so-called Newark Delay-Reduction Meeting.
United chief executive Scott Kirby was forced to pen a letter to worried airline staffers earlier this month, reassuring them that operations had Newark remained safe despite high-profile media coverage over air traffic controllers going sick en-masse and frequent technology blackouts
For example, radio frequencies were lost between aircraft and the air traffic control center in Philadelphia for around two seconds on Monday.
In his memo, Kirby slammed the FAA for regularly approving 80+ flights to arrive and depart at Newark during peak hours between 3:00 pm and 8:00 pm.
The interim order signed by the FAA on Tuesday still allows for more flights per hour than what Kirby had been arguing for – a combined total of just 48 hours during the runway construction work, rising to 77 flights per hour after the construction works have been completed.
Up until 2016, the FAA had designated Newark as a Level 3 airport, which meant that it was ‘slot controlled’ – meaning that airlines that wanted to fly in and out of EWR had to control a pair of time-controlled slots, one for arrival and one for departure.
