(Bloomberg) — Flights at Newark airport are set to increase later this month following the completion of construction on one of the busy hub’s runways, the top US aviation safety regulator said.
The Federal Aviation Administration will allow 34 hourly arrivals once it certifies the recently rebuilt runway, Chris Rocheleau, the FAA’s acting administrator, told reporters on Monday. Newark Liberty International Airport is currently limited to a maximum of 28 per hour under restrictions imposed by the FAA to reduce delays, compared to the airport’s typical maximum capacity of roughly 38 landings each hour.
“Over the course of the next month, you’re going to see improvements in this airport,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said during a press conference alongside Rocheleau. Duffy said the runway is expected to be certified by June 9 or 10 after confirming that navigational aids to help aircraft land are working properly.
The outlook suggests the key New York City-area airport is turning a corner after a brutal spring in which thousands of flights were canceled and delayed as air traffic control technology failures, a staffing crunch and construction snarled operations.
Newark is United Airlines Holdings Inc.’s largest hub for international flights and a major gateway for domestic flights. United Chief Executive Officer Scott Kirby last week said that the disruptions at the airport will trim the carrier’s second-quarter profit.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey last week announced it would reopen the runway nearly two weeks ahead of schedule, which Duffy credited to crews working around the clock in recent weeks. The runway is already being used for departures, but once final checks are finished, it can also be used for arrivals, Rocheleau said.
Compounding the airport’s challenges were a pair of radio and radar outages in late April and early May that left controllers temporarily unable to see or communicate with planes flying in the congested airspace around Newark. The incidents represented extreme examples of longstanding challenges in the US air traffic control system, which is thousands of controllers short of desired levels and relies on outdated equipment to oversee some 45,000 flights per day.
The Transportation Department and FAA reduced flights in and out of Newark to alleviate congestion at the airport. The FAA also took steps to boost staffing and upgrade technology at an air traffic facility in Philadelphia that guides planes to and from the airport, such as replacing outdated copper wiring with fiber-optic telecommunication lines.
At the Monday press conference, United’s Kirby said the flight restrictions have helped match schedules to what the airport can actually handle, after often going beyond that “theoretical maximum” of about 38 hourly arrivals in the past.
–With assistance from Mary Schlangenstein.
(Updates with additional detail, United CEO comment staring in the second paragraph.)
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