A 2-year-old boy vanished from his mom’s sight at Newark Liberty International Airport and was swept away on a baggage conveyor belt in a scary trip, adding to the list of troubling incidents that have plagued the travel hub.
The Staten Island toddler climbed onto the ankle-high conveyor belt where passengers drop off their luggage before takeoff, while his mother was busy rebooking a flight with a JetBlue employee in Terminal A last Wednesday, Pix 11 reported.
The child rode on the belt, which carried him away and dropped down a chute into the luggage screening area on the lower level of the terminal.
A pair of nearby Port Authority officers heard what happened and leapt into action to track the toddler down, Port Authority Police PBA President Frank Conti told Pix 11.
“The two cops were able to move fast into the system, which was vital,” Conti told the news station. “There was a split in the belts. One officer went toward one direction, one toward the other direction.”
One of the cops found the toddler – unharmed – near an X-Ray machine and scooped him up before he went into it.
While the child was brought to safety and flew to Tampa, Florida, with his family for vacation after the hair-raising ordeal, most news coming out of the beleaguered airport in recent months has not had a happy ending.
Newark Airport has been described as a “delay-plagued hellhole” for a slew of problems, including unprecedented backups on the tarmac, a glut of cancellations, the possible spread of an infectious disease, ongoing construction, FAA controllers walking off the job and terrifying blackouts of its control towers.
The situation at the international travel hub got so bad that one federal air safety employee warned the public not to fly out of the embattled airport, warning that it’s “not safe.”
And on April 28, air traffic controllers were left without radar and communications for 90 horrifying seconds, resulting in a domino effect that delayed thousands of flights. At least five air traffic controllers took a 45-day trauma leave because the scare rattled them so much. A similar blackout occurred in November of last year.
Two weeks ago, New Jersey health officials sounded the alarm about a potential measles outbreak when an infected individual traveled through the airport’s Terminal B.
Even the solutions offered up for the airport’s chaos come with a new set of headaches.
Experts suggested slashing daily flights – limiting options for travelers – as soon as possible, since the airport can’t handle the volume.
“I don’t see a near-term immediate everything gets better [solution],” ex-Federal Aviation Administration Safety Team Kyle Bailey told The Post.“They simply need to permanently reduce daily flights into the airport, permanently combined with using bigger planes.”
“So there is not a silver bullet,” he added.
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