Newark Airport woes persist with ground delay and more than 80 cancellations

Travel woes persisted Monday at beleaguered Newark Liberty International Airport Airport in New Jersey with a ground delay in effect.

The Federal Aviation Administration said departures from Newark would be delayed an average of 19 minutes through 9 p.m. ET.

There were over 45 delays at the airport and over 80 cancellations as of 9:30 a.m. ET, according to FlightAware data.

Passengers waited patiently for their flights at the airport, which has been at the center of a spate of issues, including a ground stop on Sunday, Mother’s Day.

“I was so nervous to fly into Newark,” one passenger said waiting for her flight Sunday told NBC New York. “Overhauling the whole system I think is going to take a lot — maybe we can just start with Newark.”

Newark experienced radar outages on Friday and Sunday, leading to dozens of cancellations and delays. 

Both cases were traced to the Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) network out of Philadelphia that guides flights in and out of Newark airspace. 

In the Friday outage, radar screens serving Newark went black shortly before 4 a.m. EDT for about 90 seconds on a limited number of sectors, the FAA said. 

And on Sunday, Newark said it issued a ground stop “due to FAA equipment outages” that lasted about 45 minutes. The FAA said there was a telecommunications issue at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, and the facilities backup system worked as it was intended, but the FAA slowed traffic to make sure it remained stable. 

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on “Meet The Press” on Sunday he was concerned about the events at Newark, and cast blame on telecommunications issues and glitches in software.

He said the system for monitoring airspace and flights is outdated, said the airport will be “up and running in short order.”

But the transportation secretary assured the public it’s safe to fly in and out of Newark.

In the interim, Duffy said Newark will experience “reduced capacity” in the coming weeks, and he’ll convene a meeting of all the airlines that serve Newark about that reduction.