United Airlines has slammed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) over its failure to staff a key control center covering its Newark hub with enough air traffic controllers, saying that more than 343,000 of its passengers have already been disrupted by air traffic control staffing shortages since the start of November.
“The FAA shortage has been especially acute at its TRACON center for Newark airspace, forcing it to reduce traffic flows to our Newark hub so that the FAA can manage air traffic safely,” the airline said in a statement on Tuesday.
TRACON facilities manage departing and arriving aircraft at major airports across the United States. Air traffic controllers at these centers need to be specially trained as they will guide aircraft in complex and congested environments within a 30 to 50-mile radius of key hub airports.
Earlier this year, the FAA shifted responsibility for managing air traffic around Newark to its TRACON facility in Philadelphia. The idea was to have more air traffic controllers available in a single location, but FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker has admitted that Thanksgiving holiday travel might be further disrupted due to air traffic control staffing shortages.
United estimates that as many as 28,000 passengers per day are being impacted by delays, cancelations, long taxi times, and longer flight times at its Newark hub, which are direct results of air traffic control staffing issues.
On November 15, the situation became so bad that more than 45,000 United passengers were disrupted in a single day.
“The single most consequential thing anyone can do to improve the flying experience is to fully staff the FAA,” the airline said in its highly critical statement.
The US airline industry is anticipating a record-breaking Thanksgiving holiday travel period, but Whitaker has warned that the FAA will likely be forced to use “traffic flow management initiatives” to deal with staffing shortages during the holidays.
“These initiatives keep the system safe, and people should know that safety is never at risk. If we are short on staff, we will slow traffic as needed to keep the system safe,” Whitaker added.
The FAA was approximately 3,000 air traffic controllers short in May, although the agency then said in September that it had hit its goal of hiring 1,800 new air traffic controllers for the year.
