Air traffic control calamity disrupting hundreds of US flights spotlights the aging system
Communications failures that snarled hundreds of flights across the Northeast on Monday have put the spotlight back on the aging systems that air traffic controllers rely on in the U.S.
Congress already handed the Federal Aviation Administration $12.5 billion last year to overhaul technology after the deadliest U.S. plane crash in more than two decades killed 67 people when an American Airlines flight collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River and a series of radar outages later that spring led to widespread cancellations at Newark Liberty International Airport.
The same Philadelphia facility that had the radar outages in the spring of 2025 lost both its primary and backup data lines at the same time on Monday. But that regional air traffic control center isn't alone; similar communications outages have also disrupted flights in Minneapolis and Dallas over the past year.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy quickly turned Monday's disruption that hit every major airport in the New York area into the latest example of why he's asking Congress for $20 billion more to pay for the next phase of the air traffic control overhaul. Airlines were working to recover from the outage on Tuesday, but FlightAware.com showed nearly 100 flights had been canceled by midday because a number of planes and crews were out of position after Monday's cancellations.
“I have money for some of the telecom replacing old copper wires. Bringing in new fiber so it's faster. The problem is this is a 40-year-old architecture or design,” Duffy said on Fox News Tuesday. “I need new money to do a whole new design — a new architecture of telecom so it will never go down.”
The aviation industry's Modern Skies Coalition backed Duffy's plan again and urged Congress to approve the money because the latest disruptions “demonstrate how critical it is to replace the antiquated technology and outdated systems that underpin our nation's air traffic control infrastructure.”
A switch on the primary communications line at the regional FAA air traffic control facility in Philadelphia failed Monday morning, but when it turned to the backup fiber optic line authorities discovered that it had been inadvertently severed by railroad construction workers. The failures left controllers without radar or communications for hours. The switch is part of the equipment scheduled to be replaced.
The outage brought commercial air traffic to a near-standstill at Newark for much of the day, with no commercial flights landing at the airport from about 9:40 a.m. to just after 5:20 p.m. local time, according to flight tracking site Flightradar24.
More than 200 flights into and out of Philadelphia International Airport were also canceled, while disruptions hit LaGuardia and Kennedy airports in New York. Flights had resumed by Monday evening.
Technical problems that affect Newark Liberty Airport tend to get outsized attention because it’s a key hub for United Airlines. During the spring of 2025, controllers in Philadelphia briefly lost radar several times and then staffing shortages at the facility prompted the FAA to restrict traffic.
The Dallas outage last September disrupted American Airlines’ key hub, and last month’s communications failure at a regional air traffic control facility in Minneapolis halted flights across several Midwestern states and led to numerous diversions and delays.
Sheldon Jacobson, whose research contributed to the design of the TSA PreCheck system, said the FAA needs to make sure that its backup systems are independent of the primary line to reduce the chance that both will fail at the same time. And he said maybe the agency should look at adding a third line to have an additional backup system.
“When any one of these systems goes down, it doesn’t just affect that airport. Because these are major hubs, it affects literally dozens of other airports and literally thousands of passengers,” said Jacobson, who is an engineering professor at the University of Illinois.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said the controllers who were on duty Monday did an exceptional job making sure everyone remained safe even when they lost their radios and radar.
“No controller starts their shift with the expectation that the equipment will fail them, but when it does they display professionalism and skill,” the union said in a statement.
The FAA says it has already replaced 3,346 communications lines and 190 voice switches across the country since the agency received what Duffy called a $12.5 billion down payment on the overhaul. But the plan also calls for redesigning the computer system that air traffic controllers rely on, shifting computing online to the cloud and adding a new AI-based system to help predict problems. Duffy says he doesn't have enough money for those projects yet.
Robert Poole, who leads transportation research at the Reason Foundation think tank he founded in the late 1970s, said the FAA needs reliable long-term funding to complete all the needed upgrades, and that is hard to get from Congress. He has long argued for spinning off air traffic control from the FAA and creating an independent agency that would be funded by ticket fees the airlines charge.
“We know what kind of technology is really needed to do that, but you can’t do that on drips and drabs of annual appropriations,” Poole said.
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