An Air Traffic Controller Speaks Out About Newark Airport
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Over the last few weeks, a crisis has unfolded just outside New York City at Newark Liberty International Airport. Controllers losing communications with packed passenger planes approaching for landing and planes taking off. In late April, the radios that controllers used to talk to airplanes went silent. And the radar they used to guide the planes suddenly went dark.

Unable to see, hear, or talk to the pilots of the aircraft they were monitoring. Controllers were in the dark for a harrowing 90 seconds. Then last week, it happened again. Another outage earlier this morning. And then just a few days ago, another malfunction. Another technical issue at Newark Airport today forcing a 45-minute ground stop, leading to more delays and cancellations.

Government officials say they're working to fix the equipment problems. And the CEO of United Airlines, which has a major hub at Newark, has personally tried to reassure the public. In an email to customers, he said that it is, quote, absolutely safe to fly out of the airport. But there's another voice that you don't often hear from after incidents like this. The people on the front lines of air safety. And this week, the Journal sat down with one of them. My name is Jonathan Stewart. I'm an air traffic controller.

I received my first rating in 2000. Excuse my voice, apparently I'm losing it. Occupational hazard. I don't think anybody wants to be involved in any sort of incident where safety is compromised. Nobody wants to be involved in that. It's not on anybody's wish list. So yes, under a lot of stress, under duress, yes, you don't want to be involved in any kind of incident where there's a loss of life.

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff. It's Thursday, May 15th. Coming up on the show, the chaos at Newark through the eyes of an air traffic controller. We heard he wanted to go public and talk to us on the record, and we were eager to get his perspective. That's aviation reporter Andrew Tangle. He sat down with air traffic controller Jonathan Stewart earlier this week to talk about what's been going on at Newark.

The circumstances of their conversation were a bit unusual. As the interview kicked off, Jonathan smoked a cigar while gunfire went off in the background. It was suggested that we meet at a gun range he goes to. And at this particular range, there's this lounge that's outfitted with Chesterfield chairs and couches and fireplace. It's very cozy.

I come here and fire off some rounds and, you know, stay proficient at using my weapon of choice, my weapons of choice. And it's just, it's a great way to relieve stress, yeah. Jonathan has been in air traffic control for 25 years. He started his career in the Air Force in the late 90s.

I joined the Air Force to do air traffic control. I didn't do nothing about it. I just knew that I wanted to do it. It sounded cool. I got a copy of what's referred to as the pilot controller glossary, which has various terminology in it. It means nothing to anybody if you're not in aviation, but I memorized a bunch of it just for fun.

Yeah, that's about it, man. The rest is history. And why do you like it? I like it because it's effing fun, man. Like it, for lack of a better way to put it, like we get off on it. Like we, when I say we, the newer controllers, supervisors, line controllers, regardless...

We enjoy that, man. I mean, it's an adrenaline rush and you have to, you play God because you cannot fail. You cannot make a mistake, okay? So we are responsible for the lives of every single person on that airplane. And there's the old saying that an air traffic controller is responsible for more lives in one shift than a doctor or a surgeon or whatever in his entire career. And that is the case. What do air traffic controllers do and what role do they play in aviation safety?

We are the guys that are guiding your pilots home. So that means when your airplane takes off and your wheels up and your captain is told to contact departure, that's me. Jonathan describes airspace like the layers of a cake, with each layer managed by a dedicated team of controllers. The people in the towers at the airport, they're in charge of the bottom layer, where the planes take off and touch down. But Jonathan, he's in the layer above that. He's what's known as a radar controller.

So those are the guys that are sitting in a dark room, staring at a scope. It's like a video game, but it's like playing 3D chess at 250 miles an hour. And that's why I said we really enjoy it. This video game is especially intense at Newark, which is some of the busiest airspace in the world.

The complexity is insane. I've worked in roughly 10 to 12 different facilities in my career. The Newark Area C, or Philly Area C, whatever we're calling it now, is by far the most complex operation I've ever worked.

The skill set that makes you a good air traffic controller makes you bad at literally everything else. Your personal life, your wives. I think I'm on wife number, I can't remember. Like, it's just, it's not great. But you're very good at your job, so you take pride in that job. So the Newark Area C controllers, or Philly Area C controllers, they all love working traffic. Like, we push it to the limit every single day.

But lately, Jonathan says that he and other controllers have been pushed beyond their limits. Throughout the country, air traffic control facilities are understaffed. The FAA has almost 11,000 fully certified controllers, but that's about 3,000 short of its target. The staffing is relatively, in my opinion, inadequate. And that's based on the numbers that we are told we should have versus the numbers that we do have.

And that is no way to place blame on anybody because that is not my forte, so to speak. But it is a challenge when you have to work multiple radar sectors combined. That is going to place limitations on how many aircraft you're going to be able to effectively and safely control.

Staffing shortages at Newark aren't just a problem for controllers like Jonathan. Our colleague Andrew says they're also a problem for travelers. The delays resulting from New York generally, including this particular facility, ripple throughout the country. And so to try to fix the staffing problem, the FAA made a big move. Last year, it moved oversight of Newark's airspace from Long Island, where it had been for years, to Philadelphia.

They thought the new location in Philadelphia would be more attractive and lead to more success, lead to more of a pipeline for training. And early on, the FAA had touted some early signs of potential success. They had a healthier pipeline of trainees coming in. They found Philly more attractive. And look, Philadelphia is more affordable than Long Island.

But this move to Philly also created some unforeseen consequences. When the FAA pulled off this move, they did so with a technological workaround, essentially. They didn't move a radar system or open up a new radar system. They opened up a satellite radar system that basically was just getting a feed via relay from the previous location on Long Island. And that introduced a lot of technological risks.

Instead of having its own radar, the new facility would rely on a link from Long Island. But that link wasn't always reliable. That became frighteningly clear in late April, when those Newark controllers lost their radar and radios for about 90 seconds. I just got told that the approach lost all the radars. Three of the four radar screens went black, and they have no frequencies. Every controller's nightmare is what happened at...

Reagan National in January, where a plane and a helicopter collided. That is, these are safety professionals behind the scenes. They do not want that to happen. And their tools are radar and radios. And when those go out, I've heard it compared to driving down the highway blindfolded and your hands tied. And they want you to be advised that they may not be able to radar contact you because of the radar issues, and they may lose you for certain times of when you're flying.

For the controllers involved, the ongoing glitches around Newark Airport have been harrowing.

The controllers were very shaken by this event on April 28th and the ones subsequent to it. And they were stressed out and they were worried about something bad happening. And after that event, four of them took stress-related trauma leave from their positions. And that added to the disruptions and staffing constraints at an already thinly staffed facility.

Air traffic controllers can take trauma leave after an incident to look after their mental health. Earlier this month, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said that workers taking trauma leave had made the staffing situation at Newark worse. He described controllers as having, quote, walked off the job. Hopefully he misspoke because the controllers did not walk off the job.

That comment rubbed Jonathan the wrong way. Walking off the job implies that they, of their own free will, left and refused to do their job. There's not a single controller in Newark Area C, to the best of my knowledge, that does not love their job, all right? We would like to have more resources to effectively do our job. Yes, that is the case. But to say that someone would

basically game the system and take trauma leave when they were not traumatized is insulting at best and just, quite frankly, misinformed. We asked United about CEO Scott Kirby's comment. A United spokesman pointed to Kirby's more recent statements calling for better equipment and working conditions for air traffic controllers.

Nobody walked off the job of their own free will. They had to be taken out of position and relieved of duty because they were not mentally fit to do it anymore at that point because of the trauma that was involved. Jonathan was speaking from experience. When Andrew interviewed him, Jonathan was also on trauma leave after a scary incident of his own. That's after the break. ♪

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You yourself are on trauma leave right now, correct? Correct. Yes. Could you walk us through the close call on May 4th that led you to take that leave? So I had been working in the operation for roughly three hours-ish at the time of the incident.

Typically, I try not to work myself or anyone else longer than two hours. It's just been my experience that after that two-hour mark, your mental acuity begins to diminish a little bit because it's fatigue. You get tired. It wasn't just the long hours that were wearing Jonathan down, though.

Since the technical glitches, he'd been doing a more complicated version of his job. Beyond the usual radar procedure, Jonathan was using pen and paper techniques to track aircraft, just in case an outage happened again. In my mind, if we are expected to lose radar, there is an operational advantage, or nay, a necessity, to use a combination of the two to effectively separate aircraft and to ensure that were you to lose radar and radios again, that you're not going to have...

A catastrophic event. So all that said to say, yes, you do have a certain way to do it. The way I did it was the way that worked for me. That increased my workload, which led to me having a close call. So a nose-to-nose situation. A nose-to-nose situation, meaning two planes were at risk of a midair collision.

Leading up to this moment, Jonathan had been monitoring two planes departing out of two New Jersey airports, a business jet and another small plane. The two aircraft were taking off around the same time. Jonathan was in charge of making sure that they stayed out of each other's way. But before he knew it, the aircraft were at the same altitude and at risk of colliding. So they were nose to nose, slightly offset when I saw it.

And I expected them to be there just like that because that was the plan. I did not expect them to be at the same altitude. So we're still not sure. There will be an investigation into that. But again, that's not my forte. - But you caught the error. - I caught the error and fixed it before it became worse. The issue was it was unexpected. So it caused me a great deal of stress. And then it made me angry because I don't like to be put in a situation

where I'm guaranteed to fail. That doesn't make any effing sense. So that was the situation I was in. Due to that, I took myself out of that situation and have taken some time off to try to get my head where it's supposed to be. After the incident, Jonathan filed an internal report saying that the situation at the Philadelphia control facility was unsafe.

An FAA spokesperson told the Journal that Jonathan's report is under review and that the agency takes safety reports seriously. Jonathan says these kinds of experiences can be traumatic. You go straight into survival mode to separate those aircraft and make sure they don't hit. And then when that's over, then it really hits you. Then it hits you. I almost, you know, had a really bad error. You know, I could have, you know, done something terrible.

Overall, what's been the toll of the fatigue and stress of the job on you personally? On me personally, it's not good for your health. That lack of sleep coupled with stress is a killer. It's not good for you. And in my situation and other people who are out on trauma leave, you do have acute PTSD, and you do have situations where you will have a recurring dream about the incident, and then that will...

make you uncomfortable enough to where you don't want to go back to sleep. So that can be a little bit of an issue as well. Jonathan says that flying is still statistically the safest way to travel. And he says he's been reassured by recent steps taken by the FAA. Last week, the FAA said that it's working to increase staffing levels at Newark. It's also adding temporary backup systems to prevent more outages and eventually new high bandwidth connections between Philadelphia and New York.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also announced plans to upgrade air traffic control infrastructure nationwide. He said the Philadelphia facility overseeing Newark would be a priority in those plans. They are taking steps in the right direction to fix this. It is a top priority from everybody that I'm aware of to get the situation taken care of, be it the equipment issues as well as the staffing issues. It is being handled at the highest level and it is the highest priority, as it should be.

What do you hope that people will take away from this interview and from hearing Jonathan? One thing we wanted to accomplish with the interview is just to humanize one of these air traffic controllers who were

right in the middle of this. They are behind the scenes. They're the ones who are under pressure to keep the planes on time and keep everyone safe with the resources that they have or don't have. I hope him coming forward helps personalize the situation and can help people at least see who the humans are behind the scenes.

Is there anything you want to add? Anything I didn't ask about that I should have asked about? I would like to add that I'm tired and I want to go take a nap. That's all for today, Thursday, May 15th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting from Robert Barba, Alison Sider, and Bodhi Atwe. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.