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Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) has made lots of news over the past month with runway closures, air traffic controller shortages, and tech issues. Today, we have some good news. Runway 4L-22R had been completely shut down since April 15th for a $121 million routine rehabilitation. It was scheduled to reopen on June 15th, but has been fast tracked and actually is operational again today.
Completing construction 13 days early is a great achievement and one that will hopefully alleviate many of the issues that the airport has been facing around excessive delays. United proactively agreed to cancel 35 roundtrip flights per day at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) for the foreseeable future. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) took note of all of the issues and released an interim order that further reduced the number of arriving and departing flights.
During the runway shutdown, only 28 of the normal 77 flights were taking off and arriving hourly. This will now increase by six hourly. The FAA reductions are expected to remain in place until October 25th to ease the pressure on Air Traffic Control (ATC). While the reopening of the runway addresses one issue, there have been others. The radar and communications systems that Philadelphia air traffic controllers use (they manage the air traffic in Newark) have failed several times. The ATC was unable to see or communicate with aircraft for 90 seconds on April 28th and May 9th. The cause was old copper wires that failed a third time on May 11th. A backup system picked up in this third instance and thankfully the radar stayed online.
The Trump administration recently shared plans for the necessary overhaul of the United States air traffic control system. The full modernization is wanted within four years and will cost as much as $31 billion for the “state of the art” replacement. The system has been neglected for many years and a full overhaul of the current technology used by thousands of controllers is a top priority. The ambitious plan that was presented by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
Anthony’s Take: This is great news for Newark flyers. It’s impressive that the runway was reopened early and this will hopefully help some travelers at the airport.
(Image Credits: gorodenkoff via iStock.)
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Advertiser & Editorial Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat earns an affiliate commission for anyone approved through the links above This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. We work to provide the best publicly available offers to our readers. We frequently update them, but this site does not include all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities.
