Podcast: Nervous In Newark—New York Air Transport In Crisis

Tens of thousands of flights have been delayed or canceled in the U.S. Northeast over the past few weeks. Airlines blame the FAA, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has his eye on airline performance—Aviation Week editors Lori Ranson, Christine Boynton, Sean Broderick and Jens Flottau discuss the real reasons.

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Rush Transcript

Jens Flottau:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Check 6. My name is Jens Flottau and I'm the executive editor of Commercial Aviation for the Aviation Week Network. With me are Christine Boynton, senior editor at Transport based in Boston, Lori Ranson, senior Analyst, Americas for CAPA and senior editor for Air Transport, and Sean Broderick, senior editor at Transport and Safety. This week, we would like to discuss the major operational disruptions, the many delays and cancellations that airlines have seen lately in the northeast, particularly the busy New York Air Traffic Control region where traffic to three major airports, JFK, LaGuardia and Newark has to be coordinated. So let me start with you, Christine. There have been major concerns about the 4th of July weekend and massive disruptions, cancellations, delays. How did it go in the end?

Christine Boynton:

Sure. Well, summer got off to a pretty rocky start, and it actually started ahead of the 4th of July holiday weekend. We take a look at the first full weekend of the summer season, the weekend of June 24th. We had a series of pretty severe storms hit the northeast, mid-Atlantic portions of the South, and thrown into the mix actually was an overheated power cable at Potomac TRACON which led to a temporary pause of departures to all DC area airports. That was on June 25th and was a limited pause but still in the mix for that weekend. So disruptions caused by weather and this ground delay, those disruptions spilled into the following week. So between June 23rd and 27th, over 43,000 delayed flights were within, into or out of the US according to FlightAware. So we take a look at the next couple of days, and by the morning of June 29th, US airlines had mainly recovered to a more typical cancellation or delay rate but as the Secretary of Transportation noted, with the exception of United, who did struggle to recover their operations.

Christine Boynton:

So that brings us to the July 4th holiday travel period, and that's really a seven day stretch. That's between June 29th through July 5th. And volumes of travelers really as projected were record-breaking. TSA announced a new all time record on June 30th, screening more than 2.8 million passengers. And flight delays in the US on that day numbered 8,800. United had the highest rate of delayed flights on that day at 45%. There was still some weather in the mix, particularly in the mid-Atlantic region, but overall cancellation rates began to improve. Still, between June 30th, that was the Friday ahead of the holiday weekend, up until yesterday, there were over 41,000 delays within, into or out of the US, and that peaked on June 30th.

Jens Flottau:

So Lori, why is it so much worse this time? And there's bad weather. I mean, there has been bad weather before. We know the kind of the structural issues. Why so much worse this time?

Lori Ranson:

It's ATC, staffing and it's also bad weather. And we know that the New York area air traffic management system is severely understaffed right now. So it's a lot of combinations of things. And it's also bad weather that just occurs more regularly. And I think one thing to point out is airlines have been saying that they've been preparing for the summer and the disruptions that will occur. And I think it's just a cautionary tale that it's still really tough to manage. We've seen that the FAA has asked airlines to cut their schedules in New York. They've done that. This didn't seem to help. For United in particular, and I know that the airline's being singled out, but we were talking about this previously. They have a huge operation at Newark. So obviously it's going to be more severe for United in terms of cancellations and delays and trying to accommodate passengers.

Lori Ranson:

And also, Christine mentioned this in an article that she wrote, Canadian airspace was closed, so you couldn't reroute through Canadian airspace either. So it was just sort of a lot of events coming together at once that unfortunately proves that the system is really fragile.

Jens Flottau:

So we see and hear a lot of blaming. The airlines are blaming the FAA. The transportation secretary says he's watching airline performance, and everyone can guess who he means. Sean, you cover the FAA for us. What's your assessment of the failings on the ATC side?

Sean Broderick:

Well, as both Lori and Christine have noted, the staffing challenges that the air traffic control facilities are having, I don't think they can be understated. We mentioned New York. The New York, the TRACON or Terminal Radar Approach Control facility, 54% of its allocated certified controllers. And Miami Towers at 66%. Looking big picture, if you go back 10 years, so... Well, let's go back to 2012. A recent DOT Office of Inspector General Report laid all this out beautifully. If you go back 10 years, the FAA had... Well, the FAA has about 13,300 controllers total they employ now. About 10,600 of them are certified professional controllers. The rest are in training. So that 10,600 number is key. Those are the ones on your front lines that can be staffed almost anywhere, although the more experienced ones are needed in the busier and more complicated centers.

Sean Broderick:

If you look at that 10,600 number, 10 years ago, there were 10% more. There were 11,800 of them. Now, if you go back 10 years, we don't have 10% fewer towers. We have the same number of towers, 264. We have the same number of in-route facilities, 22. We have another handful of facilities that are still important and need to be staffed. But while things have gotten a little bit more efficient in 10 years thanks to NextGen, they haven't gotten that much more efficient. So when you look at the 26 most important facilities, TRACONs and big towers, 20 of them are under FAA's own target of having 85% of the staff that they need. And many of them are under 75%, including the ones we just talked about. When you're going into a busy season with those kind of problems, you have very, very little margin for anything extra or more complicated. So factor in vacations and sick times and unexpected issues on the staffing side, you have no margin for a series of storms over three days that knock out a hub.

Sean Broderick:

So the staffing problem is real and it's not going to be fixed overnight. The FAA is authorized to hire more controllers. They are working to hire more controllers and get them trained, but it's not a problem that's going to be fixed overnight. That's the reason why airlines are being asked to adjust schedules at busy places like Kennedy and Newark and LaGuardia. And it's a problem that's not going to go away. We haven't even gotten into the frequency of the weather problems. That's a whole other discussion, a whole other podcast. It might be a whole other unit of informer that talks about weather. But those are issues too I think. I think we're seeing more common super disruptive weather events that the airlines and the FAA have to factor into the problems they already have. So big problem. It's a problem that was telegraphed by the FAA. The airlines understood it was coming. But it's really tough to see, like Lori said, how on earth do you manage it even though it's coming without cutting your schedules to levels that the airlines or at least their shareholders won't accept?

Jens Flottau:

And obviously the lack of technology investment must play a role there too. I mean, we're still operating pretty old systems in ATC.

Sean Broderick:

On the FAA side, yeah. Look, I think a lot of people who are much smarter than me that I talked to say it is time to take a step back and look at the entire FAA air traffic management system, the infrastructure and the technology, and really question where investments need to be going. With very few exceptions, every one of those airplanes flying out there needs to talk to somebody every time they want to do something.

Sean Broderick:

And if you think about 2023 and you think about how things like Tesla cars and smartphones work, it is mind-boggling that for an aircraft to transition from one sector and a center to the next sector, they have to talk to a human being. There are limited exceptions. Controller pilot data link communications and pre-departure clearance things, things the FAA has worked on. The question is why aren't these things more prevalent? And why is an industry, not just the FAA, but industry collectively investing in these things knowing that they may not pay off now, but in five, eight, 10 years as traffic grows and these challenges become more acute and new aircraft are entering the system, whether it's AAM or whatever it is.

Sean Broderick:

Convincing airlines to make the investment's very difficult because they want payoffs now. They don't want to invest in anything that might pay off in five or 10 years. Look at ADS-B. We did ADS-B out. We didn't do ADS-B in. If you go back and look at the rules, there's a whole explanation of why they didn't do ADS-B in, which would put transponders in vehicles on the airfield and it would tell airplane to airplane. In the cockpit, you would know where the other airplanes are, the other vehicles are, anything around you that's a threat. Didn't do that because it wasn't deemed to be the minimum safe necessity for transitioning to space-based guidance.

Sean Broderick:

You're going to get the same kind of pushback if you try to move this technology forward. But the industry has to make a choice. Either they're going to deal with this for the next however long, decades or they're going to start to invest, not just on the FAA side but on the industry side as well. I would like to see it happen only because I think it would make covering the industry a heck of a lot more interesting because you'd be focusing on cool technology and not meltdowns. I question whether the airlines really would want to see it happen though. I think they would rather go along in this way and make strategic decisions that pay off in the short-term and not make long-term bets that in fairness may not come to pass.

Jens Flottau:

And as you say, the airlines aren't making these investments either. If you look back six months ago, the big Southwest meltdown. In the aftermath, it turned out that the lack of investment into its own in-house IT played a major role there. So has that played a role in this case over the past few weeks, again, Christine?

Christine Boynton:

Yes. It's an interesting question and Southwest has actually said that they're estimating investments to the tune of 10s of millions of dollars in operational resiliency following that December disruption. But a couple of cases, so United actually did come out. The union representing its flight attendants have been over the last couple weeks pretty vocal about the number of crew schedulers that the airline is running with, saying that United is operating with almost half as many as an airline one-fifth its size.

Christine Boynton:

So on the first day of July, CEO, Scott Kirby came out in a internal company blog to sort of talk through several factors of what he says happened during these disruptions and what could be addressed. So in addition, just talking through the unprecedented weather at Newark compounded by the air traffic controller workforce shortage, he also acknowledged that the level of disruption they experienced left their aircraft and crews scattered across the country and out of position. And long hold times noted by Cruz had occurred on systems he said that were, quote, "Simply not designed for what we went through this past week." So in this internal blog, he outlined five things that the airline could improve upon and he led with crew technology. So he set a goal of making the crew app, quote, "Just as good as our customer-facing app," with upgrades that will allow for self-service rather than necessitating these large call volumes to overwhelm crew scheduling teams.

Christine Boynton:

And if I can point out just another example, American in its first quarter earnings call spoke about investments to their team, fleet and technology to build that preparedness heading into the summer. And one thing that they talked about was a system called HEAT, which stands for Hub Efficiency Analytics Tool. Now this tool called HEAT, it builds their operational resilience to weather using predictive analytics that allow it to adjust proactively its schedule and as it describes protect the system and the most number of customers ultimately, it says, allowing it to recover quicker. And following this holiday weekend, they came out with a few points and they have said that this was their best ever July 4th weekend completion factor. Obviously, they have different hubs than what United was dealing with, but it's an interesting point to note, this focus on technology.

Jens Flottau:

Lori, the other big airline that has a base, at least a big base, in New York is JetBlue. And they were hit pretty bad too, right?

Lori Ranson:

Yeah. They were hit pretty bad, I mean, not on the scale of United obviously, but again, they've said they've invested in crew technology and having spare crews or trying to manage crews to get them where they want to be. United has said the same thing, especially after what happened in Denver over the Christmas holiday. United made a point of saying, "We are investing in making sure that we have backup crews and we can get them where they need to be." And this just shows how difficult it really is to manage through these types of events. And JetBlue says it will take a little bit of a revenue hit already from trimming the schedule in New York. And obviously, United's probably going to take a little bit of a financial hit as well in the quarter because of probably re-accommodation, trimming the schedule, crew inefficiencies.

Lori Ranson:

So I mean, it does build up. And not to beat a dead horse, but it's really tough to see how it's going to improve dramatically in the short-term. What's going to happen in Atlanta in the next round of thunderstorms that happens so regularly there? I mean, I think Delta's used to managing this, but again, it's United's turn now at the moment. And what happens for the rest of the summer? You have thunderstorms in Charlotte. You have thunderstorms in Atlanta. You have hurricanes that are probably going to start arriving earlier than normal.

Lori Ranson:

So yeah, it really is tough for the airlines out there. And there's no easy fix, is the main takeaway. And it seems like this proves even if you're trying to be as prepared as possible, it's really tough to navigate these events with the demand levels that we have right now. And maybe the next question is with all this kind of media coverage on the delays and the cancellations, does that affect demand over the next few weeks during a period in which demand's going to be weaker anyway because school's starting and everyone's getting back into the office and not traveling as much? So...

Jens Flottau:

So what's your guess? I mean, are we at a point where this will affect demand because people just decide not to travel?

Lori Ranson:

I think it's probably going to be a consideration for people when they book, say, over busy holiday periods, because we've had the Christmas disruption, we've had sort of the summer disruption. And I think you have to factor that in if you're going to book travel. Do you want to risk being stuck in an airport for an indefinite period of time? It doesn't seem that it's affecting demand right now. And we all know that the consumer brain doesn't really have that long of a memory for these types of things, especially if you can get a good deal on airfare. So it's tough to say for sure, but I think some people will take it into consideration.

Jens Flottau:

So I mean, we've talked about possible structural consequences of this, one being more investment into IT infrastructure. That's absolutely necessary. The other angle I see is will there be a point where United needs to ask itself the question whether it still makes sense to operate a hub in Newark and maybe it has to come to the conclusion to move some of the flying elsewhere where there's some more capacity, more air space capacity, where the ATC situation is better, where there's not three big airports within a constrained space. Will Newark end up being a large base rather than a hub at some point?

Lori Ranson:

I think it's tough to say, because United has invested a lot into Newark and building up Newark. So to kind of downsize it would be a huge decision. And I'm not sure that United's going to ask itself that question anytime soon.

Jens Flottau:

Plus other airlines might ask themselves the same question in different places too, right? Christine, any views there?

Christine Boynton:

Well, I think it'll be interesting to see what happens with following this disruption, what happens with Canadian airspace. They had mentioned in their post-storm assessment that Kirby said, quote, "The reality is that Newark simply can't function under thunderstorm conditions unless there are departure route to the west." And that's one of the biggest takeaways they say that FAA is working on with them in Canada. So it'll be interesting to see what happens there. In the short-term, they have said they may need to further reduce their operations at Newark. This would be on top of those capacity reductions that they've made prior to the summer at the request of FAA, but they may need to reduce further from there.

Jens Flottau:

Well, and Christine, there was something you wanted to add.

Christine Boynton:

Yes. So in a late May briefing, the transportation secretary was speaking about efforts being made to address some of these constraints and locations feeling the pinch, continuing to work on solutions for the New York area TRACON to address the workforce there and meet operational needs, but he pointed out that's not the only constraint happening here. And the way he put it is, "This is God. This is airlines. And this is us," so pointing to some of the other disruptions that can occur in addition to that staffing.

Jens Flottau:

Well, I think that's all we've got time for today, unfortunately. Thanks to all of you for listening in. Thanks to Lori, Christine and Sean for participating. And of course, thanks to our podcast editor in London, Guy Ferneyhough. Don't miss the next episode by subscribing to Check 6 in your podcast app of choice. And if you haven't already, please download Aviation Week's Show News app to go back and read all our coverage from the Paris Air Show. Search for it in the App Store or Google Play. Show News will also be at the forthcoming Royal International Air Tattoo in England. So check the app for news and analysis during that event. Bye for now. And have a good day.