Newark airport has another radar outage

Second one in a week sparks safety fears

- NIRAJ CHOKSHI

An air traffic control facility that guides planes at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey had a brief radar outage Friday morning, the latest technological disruption at one of the nation's busiest airports.

The outage, which affected communications and radar displays at a facility in Philadelphia, occurred just before 4 am and lasted about 90 seconds, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

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 Donald Trump. Just days after he took office, an American Airlines plane crashed into an Army helicopter near Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, killing everybody aboard both aircraft.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters Friday that a "glitch in the system" had been caused in the morning by "the same telecom and software issues that were raised last week."