WASHINGTON – The American transport secretary, Sean Duffy, confirmed on Wednesday that the number of flights in and outside the Newark Liberty International Airport could be reduced and declared to the legislators concerned with deep personnel cuts at the Federal Aviation Administration: “We can do more.”
Duffy has also said that he expects the agency to reach a graduate target of 2,000 new air traffic controllers this year, but warned that the chronic controller shortage would take years to repair.
He blamed Biden administration for the shortage and infrastructure failures at Newark airport, a refrain he has repeated since April 28, when the controllers lost the radio and the radar contact for 90 seconds with the planes they guided.
The brief power outage has caused massive delays, a problem that continues to afflict the airport.
“We have not had 3,000 controller shortages in the past 100 days,” said Duffy in the testimony to the Chamber’s Credit Sub-Comeding. “Four years ago, which was preceded where nothing was done, and the surveillance groups warned the dowry that the infrastructure failed and nothing was done.”
The number of controllers at the national level has in fact increased and was held stable to around 10,619 during the Biden administration, against 10,268 in 2020, the last year of President Trump’s first term, according to the National Air Traffic Controlrs Association.
The distribution of communications of last month in Newark occurred when the copper wiring which transmits the Radar data from New York to the basis of the controller in Philadelphia, FAA said earlier.
Duffy insisted at the time that no plane was likely to crash. But the incident occurred shortly after the Trump administration dismissed hundreds of FAA workers, including maintenance mechanisms, aeronautical information and environmental protection specialists in its efforts to reduce the federal government.
Presenting before the Congress Committee on Wednesday, Duffy faced a bipartite repression of the legislators feared that the drastic cuts of the point and the FAA could endanger travelers.
“I think many of us here should be that federal bureaucracy has become swollen, but I think we must be a little more precise in the reduction of a department with such a critical mission” as the point, said representative Steve Womack, R-Ark. “So the question is quite simple, how many departures can you manage without eroding the ability to carry out a safe and effective mission?”
“We are currently working on certain ideas on how we can rationalize the department,” said Duffy.
“Listen, we can do more with less, Mr. President, and if we do more with less, it means that we will have additional money, I think, through this committee to put in the infrastructure that many of us want a lot in our communities,” Duffy told Womack.
Representative Jim Clyburn, DS.C. said that he feared that “dowry workforce reductions (can stop any significant progress in transport security”.
Duffy insisted that the cuts were surgical and “preserved all our critical security mission positions, including air traffic controllers”.
“None has been authorized to retire by any of the programs we have offered,” he said.
As for the defective wiring that caused the travel chaos last month, Duffy told the subcommittee: “We work thanks to the upgrading of the telecommunications infrastructure to take care of the delays when we are talking about at the moment.”
Newark is only one of the many airports in the country that has faced aging and sometimes failing infrastructure.
During an audience of the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday, the deputy operations of the FAA air traffic control, Franklin McIntosh, told the Senators that controllers’ control connecting Reagan National Airport to Washington and the Pentagon has been “inoperable” since March 2022.
“We insist on this line to be fixed before resuming the operations of the Pentagon,” McIntosh told the President of Commerce, Ted Cruz (R-TX).
Meanwhile, the FAA was looking for a temporary fix to soften the delays in Newark, where in addition to a shortage of controllers, there was a construction during the track.
There should be 38 certified controllers at the Newark service, the FAA said. Currently, there are only 22.
“The FAA has gathered all the airlines that serve Newark to have a conversation about how there can be a delayed reduction,” said Duffy. “So, if you book your flight, this flight will fly, you don’t have people at the airport for two, four, six hours, then have a canceled flight.”
Clint Henderson, a travel expert on Point Guy website, said: “This seems to be the right solution because air traffic control seems unable to manage the normal volume with a seriously reduced allocation”.
“Right now, the airport manages approximately 56 flights per hour, but it is supposed to be able to manage more than 70 of the hour (when the weather conditions allow it),” sent a Henderson email. “It seems that the FAA wants to keep a limit to thefts for at least the following month. United has already voluntarily reduced 35 flights per day, which seems cautious in current conditions.”
Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, DN.J., also questioned Duffy about the comments he recently made on a radio program on the passage of his wife’s airport at Laguardia airport in New York so that she can avoid flying outside Newark.
Duffy insisted that this was due to concerns about delays and not on security.
“I send it from Newark all the time,” he said.
Owen Hayes reported Washington, Corky Siemaszko reported in New York.
