An air traffic controller at Newark Liberty International Airport feared another midair collision during an unexpected power outage late last month.
CNN Aviation Correspondent Pete Muntean on Tuesday recalled speaking with the individual in the room where the 90-second lapse in radar and radio occurred.
“He essentially described this to me as the most dangerous situation you could have as an air traffic controller in the Newark terminal radar approach control facility,” Muntean said on The Source.
Muntean read a quote by the air traffic controller, who referenced the mass casualty crash over D.C. in January when talking about a FedEx flight during a previous incident.
“It was just by the grace of God that there wasn‘t another plane in its way. We all expected what happened in D.C. to happen here,” he said.
During the outage, controllers were “operating blind and deaf,” as Muntean put it.
“And so he came into the room where these controllers were essentially scrambling to try and figure out what was still online,” he continued. “And you have to imagine the uncertainty.”
Even when power did come back on, the air traffic controller said they couldn’t possibly know if it would stay on.
“He says that three controllers, one supervisor and one trainee, are out on this 45-day long trauma leave, and he essentially does not fault them for taking it because he says they raised the alarm over and over again that this could happen at this facility,” Muntean continued.
As for what caused the issue, the controller pointed to “one data stream” that connects the old facility in Long Island with the new one in Philadelphia.
“He says this happened before and a FedEx flight was getting vectored onto the final approach path at Newark by controllers there when they lost radio ability, the ability to communicate via radio,” Muntean said. “And he says that plane essentially overshot the final approach path and into the busy airspace over LaGuardia.”
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