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

For those who’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 affected by a whole lot 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 amount of normal flights with such staffing shortages. The issues have continued, with air site 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 will cancel 35 each day round-trip flights—representing about 10 p.c of the flights operated by United out of EWR—because of the delays to be able to shield their clients.

“It is disappointing to make additional cuts to an already lowered schedule at Newark, however since there isn’t a strategy to resolve the near-term structural FAA staffing points, we really feel like there isn’t a different selection to be able 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 in addition 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 take into account 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 protected. It isn’t a protected scenario proper now for the flying public,” they reportedly stated. Costello added: “Actually an unbelievable assertion, unsolicited. He simply stated 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 site 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), stated 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 to be able to help this work, aviation security, and our jobs. Working collectively we will resolve the issue quicker and maintain everybody protected.”