The FAA has extended operating restrictions at Newark Liberty International Airport and related staffing relief at John F. Kennedy International, LaGuardia and Ronald Reagan Washington National through the end of the summer 2027 scheduling season, according to Federal Register notices published Tuesday.
At Newark, scheduled operations will remain limited to 36 arrivals and 36 departures per hour from 6 a.m. through 10:59 p.m. from Oct. 25, 2026, through Oct. 30, 2027. According to the FAA, the Philadelphia TRACON, which took over Newark’s Area C in July 2024, has 74 certified professional controllers against a target of 114. Area C has 28 certified controllers against a target of 46. The agency also said arrival on-time performance at Newark remains at 75 percent under the current limits.
In a related notice, the FAA also extended staffing-related relief at JFK, LaGuardia and some affected DCA operations through Oct. 30, 2027. The agency said the New York TRACON has 129 certified professional controllers, or 57 percent of its 226-controller target, and does not expect to reach 70 percent staffing until after 2027. The relief allows carriers to reduce some operations without losing priority for future schedules, a step the FAA said is intended to better align scheduled traffic with what the system can handle.
The FAA actions were published the same day the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation, Space and Innovation was scheduled to examine airspace safety and recent close-call incidents across the National Airspace System. The hearing follows heightened attention on controller staffing, runway incursions and collision risk after several recent accidents and near-misses, including the fatal January 2025 midair collision near DCA and the March 2026 Air Canada Express collision at LaGuardia.
No information here on why the federal government is failing to fully staff our air traffic control system but the reason is political, specifically Barack Obama and his administration wanted more “diversity and inclusion” in the towers and TRACONs. So many white guys who had already passed the challenging controller selection testing and had qualified for controller academy were dumped. Then a new group of candidates were selected with priority given to their race and gender, and it didn’t go well.
As a retired professional pilot and aviation business owner I know there are plenty of top notch women and minority controllers, but to put race and gender at the top of the selection criteria was insanity. Fortunately this disastrous policy has been changed but it takes years of training and experience for a controller to reach “full performance level”. So if you’re stuck in an airliner waiting on a ground hold you can thank massive federal mismanagement and attempted social engineering for the favor, but take comfort in knowing that ATC personnel are now being hired for merit and ability only.
Another issue in current staffing is plaguing all the trades - younger people just don’t want to work. Not all, but many. Ask almost any tradesman and you’ll get the same answer. And, although of a different nature, ATC is a trade requiring commitment, dedication, and a skill set. The worker shortage is everywhere, skilled and not so skilled. Even higher wages is failing to attract them. Apparently, life in Mom’s basement is too easy!
Recently retired ATC here.
The perspective from the new hires (and myself) is that the job is just not worth the money for all the sacrifices you have to make in most of the facilities.
60 hour 6 day weeks, working every single holiday, rotating “rattler shifts” with only 9 hours to sleep between each shift, absolutely horrible management, dozens of shutdowns with months of no pay, and only being able to bid two weeks of leave per year and have it guaranteed by the contract.
These are just some of the many reasons why I don’t recommend this job to anyone anymore.
Only real remaining perk is the early retirement/pension at age 50 and mandatory at 56. But being a short career you don’t get much of a chance to build up a 401k.
We recently had 6 controllers at my facility quit before retirement which NEVER happened in the past. And every single one that made it to the minimum 49-50 year old retirement age punched out ASAP.
When you don’t pay enough to attract the best, you dont get quality applicants. Or really ANY qualified applicants.
Don’t just blame it on one president or the other (Trump x 2, Biden x 1, Obama x 2 Dubya x 2)…. Congress is what has failed primarily. Sure the executive branch all failed as well but if Congress would have taken the FAA out of the shutdown cycle this wouldn’t be an issue.
If you have to blame a President or two look to the training shutdown during COVID started by Trump and not shut down quickly enough by Biden.