Newark Airport equipment issues highlight inconveniences the FAA hopes to avoid this summer
NEWARK, New Jersey (WABC) -- Passengers were still feeling the impacts on Tuesday of the air traffic technology outage at Newark International Airport, with flights delayed, rerouted and canceled.
The FAA said telecommunications were knocked out at an air traffic control center in Philadelphia on Monday, which manages traffic in and out of Newark.
An equipment outage at one of the nation's busiest airports, combined with a severe staffing shortage of air traffic controllers, canceled or delayed more than a third of flights.
That's why a family made a quick decision on Monday to stay in Arizona an extra day rather than wait it out with children.
"But, we had to pull off this stuff off the plane, and then get to the hotel and then pack it up next day," Rich Spanier said.
It cost them an extra $1,000, but at least their flight on Tuesday was on time.
"When you travel, you have to expect some inconveniences," he said.
The FAA says it wants to minimize inconveniences ahead of a busy summer.
The agency held a meeting on Tuesday and released a video explaining that since storms are still the biggest flight disruptor in the summertime, it's implementing alternate routes and strategies, especially along the east coast.
But what happened Monday could also happen again.
"When the technology at the FAA fails, the airlines are literally stuck," Travel Analyst Henry Harteveldt said.
Hartvelt says the problem is years of inadequate funding for that technology.
"We have starved the FAA financially as a country from being able to invest in the hardware and software necessary in part because the FAA gets funded annually as opposed to on a more long-term basis. And so it's been a lot of patching what's broken and hoping that what's working doesn't break down," Harteveldt said.
He says fixing that will take time and the same goes for the air traffic control staff shortage as workers are trained.
Another couple says the Trump administration needs to take these issues seriously, because frequent travelers like them are worried.
"Just because of some things that aren't related to the administration and some things that are, but if you put them all together, it isn't good for America, it's not good for the economy and it's not good for the world," frequent traveler Matt Larrabee said.
The FAA said it expects this summer to be so busy, there will be some days with more than 50,000 flights.
Aviation experts say it will take billions of dollars to upgrade the system, require congressional approval, and it will take time.
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