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CHILLING audio has exposed the moment that air traffic controllers lost all contact with planes approaching a major US airport.
One pilot was left asking,” Approach, are you there?” as he was met with radio silence from controllers in the terrifying recording.
The tense moment marks the latest development as travelers at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey endure the ninth consecutive day of delays due to staffing shortages.
A system outage at the airport last week resulted in air traffic controllers temporarily losing their ability to see, hear, or communicate with planes landing there for a duration of 90 seconds.
Amidst the outage, a United Airlines pilot, on a flight from New Orleans, made at least five attempts to radio the controllers, urgently requesting clearance to land at the bustling airport, situated just 12 miles from New York City.
The desperate flyer was met with about 30 seconds of silence over the air as he asked if anyone was there, according to a recording on LiveATC.net.
After seconds of not responding, a controller finally answered when the systems came back online.
“United 1951, how do you hear me?” the controller asked.
The pilot replied, “I got you loud and clear, United 1951.”
Days after the outage, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said on Friday that Newark Airport “cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead.”
He issued a chilling warning to travelers saying “it’s not safe” to fly out of Newark after about 20% of Newark’s controllers walked off the job in recent weeks.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy acknowledged last week’s outage and insisted no planes were in danger of crashing.
“The primary communication line went down, the backup line didn’t fire, and so for 30 seconds we lost contact with air traffic,” Duffy explained on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle on Monday.
“Now, were planes going to crash? No. They have communication devices.
He added, “But it’s a sign that we have a frail system in place, and it has to be fixed.”
At a news conference last week, Duffy emphasized there are “cracks in the system.”
United Airlines CEO statement
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby warned customers about perceived issues at Newark Liberty International Airport.
“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.
“United is committed to doing absolutely everything in our power to minimize the impact that this will have on customers and so we are unilaterally cancelling 35 roundtrip flights per day from our Newark schedule starting this weekend.
“It’s disappointing to make further cuts to an already reduced schedule at Newark, but since there is no way to resolve the near-term structural FAA staffing issues, we feel like there is no other choice in order to protect our customers,” Kirby said.
Duffy added, “It‘s our job to actually see over the horizon what the issues are and fix it before there is an incident that we will seriously regret.”
He also admitted that Newark’s air traffic system is “incredibly old,” according to CNN.
“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.”
There is currently a nationwide shortage of about 3,000 air traffic controllers.
GROUND DELAYS
The Federal Aviation Administration has blamed the lack of workers, along with runway construction, for the recent delays and cancellations overwhelming Newark Airport.
Thousands of flights have been delayed starting on the day of the ATC outage.
On Tuesday, the FAA imposed a ground delay for flights heading to Newark.
The average delay is two hours and 41 minutes, according to CNN
