What Vacationers Ought to Know About Newark Airport’s Main Delays Amid Huge FAA Staffing Scarcity



After a chaotic week full of journey delays, vacationers ought to brace themselves in the event that they’re flying into or out of Newark Worldwide Airport. Here is every part to know to make an knowledgeable choice about your travels.

Should you’re flying via Newark Worldwide Airport (EWR), put together your self for potential delays and rescheduled flights. 

The New Jersey airport, which serves the broader New York Metropolis space, has been tormented by a whole bunch of flight delays and cancellations for the final week—and the woes proceed. Greater than 20 p.c of Federal Aviation Administration controllers have walked off the job, resulting in delays and flight cancellations, as EWR is unequipped to deal with the quantity of typical flights with such staffing shortages. The issues have continued, with air visitors management outages and thunderstorms over the weekend additionally contributing to the chaos on the airport. 

As well as, development on the runways has left EWR working with just one practical runway, additional including to the delays and cancelled flights. 

The Division of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics ranked Newark Worldwide Airport the 14th busiest airport within the U.S. in 2024.

United Airways, which has a hub at Newark, introduced on Could 2 that it could cancel 35 day by day round-trip flights—representing about 10 p.c of the flights operated by United out of EWR—because of the delays so as to shield their clients.

“It is disappointing to make additional cuts to an already decreased schedule at Newark, however since there is no such thing as a strategy to resolve the near-term structural FAA staffing points, we really feel like there is no such thing as a different selection so as to shield our clients,” United CEO Scott Kirby wrote in a letter on the United web site. “United has been urging the US authorities for *years* to make use of its authority to successfully restrict the variety of flights to what the airport can realistically deal with. Previous failure to make these modifications had led to the circumstances that United and, most significantly, our clients now face.”

Vacationers who have already got plans to journey out and in of EWR ought to examine for journey alerts each from the airport web site and likewise via their airline. It doesn’t matter what the advisories say, passengers ought to put together themselves for potential delays and cancellations as the difficulty continues this week. 

Vacationers ought to think about shuffling their flights to neighboring airports, as a federal air security worker informed MSNBC correspondent Tom Costello that security is a priority. “It isn’t secure. It isn’t a secure state of affairs proper now for the flying public,” they reportedly mentioned. Costello added: “Actually an unimaginable assertion, unsolicited. He simply mentioned that to me, and individually: ‘Don’t fly into Newark. Keep away from Newark in any respect prices.’”

Journey + Leisure‘s request for remark from the FAA was not returned on the time of publish.

“NATCA, the air visitors controllers’ union, has warned for many years that infrastructure have to be rebuilt and modernized,” Sara Nelson, worldwide president of the Affiliation of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA), mentioned in a assertion obtained by T+L. “We name on all airways working out of Newark to chop deliberate flights at an equal proportion throughout airways so as to assist this work, aviation security, and our jobs. Working collectively we are able to clear up the issue quicker and maintain everybody secure.”

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