The profit-driven priorities of the capitalist owners of the airline industry and their collaborators in the government lay behind the frightening 90-second collapse of radar directing planes in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport April 28 and May 9. On May 11 a backup telecommunications system also went down.
Galen Munroe, spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the controllers’ union, said workers at the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control center who are responsible for separating and sequencing aircraft at Newark were “unable to see, hear, to talk to them.”
“We don’t have a radar, so I don’t know where you are,” a controller told a United Airlines flight arriving from Charleston, South Carolina, April 28. He instructed the crew to look out for other planes. Flights have been delayed, cancelled or rerouted over the last two weeks. Instead of guiding planes from a runway tower, Newark air traffic control is done remotely with radarscopes. Last summer the Federal Aviation Administration moved Newark controllers to a facility in Philadelphia, claiming “a more affordable place to live will make it easier over time to recruit,” the New York Times reported.
Fourteen controllers should have been on shift April 28, but only four were scheduled. “Our staffing is in dire straits — it’s awful — not safe or efficient in any way,” one controller told the Wall Street Journal.
Nationwide there are some 10,700 fully certified controllers, about 3,000 short of what is needed, according to the union. Many controllers work 10-hour days and six-day workweeks.
The government’s own figures show that 76% of the FAA’s air-traffic systems across the country are “unsustainable” or “potentially unsustainable.” According to FAA data there are some 700 communications outages every week.
On Jan. 29 a midair collision between a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and a regional jet over the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport killed 67 people.
Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-Communications Workers of America, released a statement May 2 saying, “NATCA, the air traffic controllers’ union, has warned for decades that infrastructure must be rebuilt and modernized.” Nelson called on Newark airport to cut back on flights.
Air traffic controllers have long fought for better working conditions. In 1981, 13,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization went on strike for a wage raise and a four-day, 32-hour workweek. President Ronald Reagan fired them and denied their right to ever be rehired, a measure that was only overturned years later.