An air traffic control facility that guides planes at Newark Liberty International Airport had a brief radar outage on Friday morning, the latest technological disruption at one of the nation’s busiest airports.
The Federal Aviation Administration said that the outage, which affected communications and radar displays at a facility in Philadelphia, occurred just before 4 a.m. and lasted about 90 seconds.
A similar 90-second outage last week, on a Monday afternoon, upended travel at the airport, leaving controllers unable to communicate with pilots and keep planes from crashing into one another. Several controllers working that afternoon were distressed by that episode and took time off, which resulted in several days of low staffing at the facility, causing widespread flight delays and cancellations.
The problems at Newark and other aviation safety concerns have become a major challenge for President Trump. Just days after he took office, an American Airlines plane crashed into an Army helicopter near Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington, killing everybody abroad both aircraft.
On Thursday, the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, announced a plan to modernize and overhaul the country’s air traffic control system. The proposal, which will cost billions of dollars, includes investing in new technology and facilities. But many details remain unclear and the plan will require approval from Congress.
The latest outage on Friday will likely intensify pressure on administration officials and lawmakers to act.
An air traffic controller directing traffic at Newark early Friday mentioned the latest outage to the pilot of FedEx flight 1989 when it occurred, according to a publicly available recording of air traffic control communications with pilots.
“FedEx 1989, I’m going to hand you off here, our scopes just went black again,” the controller said. “If you care about this, contact your airline and try to get some pressure for them to fix this stuff.”
“Sorry to hear about that,” the pilot replied.
ABC News reported on the outage earlier.
Flights to and from Newark were delayed on Friday morning. The F.A.A. also initiated a “ground delay program,” which remained in effect midday. It held flights destined for Newark at their origin airports by an average of more than four hours because of rain in and around New York City. The Newark airport is a roughly 17-mile drive from Midtown Manhattan.
A spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates Newark Liberty, said the outage did not affect passenger operations at the airport.
Newark has long had problems. The F.A.A. had recently hoped to address a staffing shortfall among air traffic controllers last summer by moving some operations for Newark from Westbury, N.Y., on Long Island, to Philadelphia. Controllers at the facility in New York had fought the relocation, but the F.A.A. said that it could recruit more controllers by moving the work to a more affordable area.
About 10 percent of flights to and from Newark were canceled from the start of last week through Wednesday, according to data from FlightAware, a flight tracking service. The two other airports serving the New York region fared much better. Over the same period, only about 2 percent of flights were canceled at LaGuardia Airport and 1 percent were canceled at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Newark also saw far more delays than the other two airports.
The disruptions are particularly frustrating for United Airlines, which counts Newark as one of its eight airport hubs and dominates traffic there. More than two out of three flights to and from the airport are sold by United. A variety of airlines account for the remaining flights, according to Cirium, an aviation data firm.
In an email to employees this week, United’s chief executive, Scott Kirby, said that flights to and from the airport remain safe. Newark is a “crown jewel of the region,” he said, but the airport is overwhelmed, with more flights scheduled on most afternoons and evenings than the F.A.A. has said it can handle.
“This math doesn’t work,” he said. “Especially when there is weather, staffing issues or technology breakdowns — the airspace, taxiways and runways get backed up and gridlock occurs.”
To solve the problem, Mr. Kirby said that the F.A.A. should reverse a 2016 decision that allowed more flights at the airport in an effort to promote competition at Newark.
At highly congested airports around the world, including Kennedy and LaGuardia, aviation authorities may choose to tightly control opportunities to take off and land, known as “slots.” Newark was similarly slot-controlled, but the F.A.A. relaxed those restrictions in 2016.
At the time, United had been accused of holding onto, but not using, some slots to maintain its dominance at the airport. The airline criticized the decision in 2016, saying it would further strain the New York air space.
Michael Levenson and Patrick McGeehan contributed reporting.
Niraj Chokshi writes about aviation, rail and other transportation industries.
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