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

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 stricken 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 common 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, building 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 Might 2 that it might cancel 35 every day round-trip flights—representing about 10 p.c of the flights operated by United out of EWR—as a result of delays with the intention to shield their prospects.

“It is disappointing to make additional cuts to an already lowered schedule at Newark, however since there isn’t any option to resolve the near-term structural FAA staffing points, we really feel like there isn’t any different selection with the intention to shield our prospects,” 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 prospects now face.”

Vacationers who have already got plans to journey out and in of EWR ought to verify 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 advised MSNBC correspondent Tom Costello that security is a priority. “It isn’t protected. It isn’t a protected state of affairs 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 with the intention to help this work, aviation security, and our jobs. Working collectively we are able to resolve the issue quicker and maintain everybody protected.”