Blumenthal Urges Transportation Secretary To ‘Staff the Towers’ as Memorial Day Travel Holiday Looms

HARTFORD, CT – With more than 3 million Americans expected to travel by air over Memorial Day weekend, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-CT, expressed his concern about a series of air radar and communications failures in the past few weeks.

“These outages drastically increase the risk of a midair collision and undermine public confidence in the safety of our nation’s airspace,” Blumenthal wrote in a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. “I urge you to take every necessary step to expeditiously end these dangerous technology blackouts and ensure that our airspace, especially the congested New York City area, is managed at all times with the highest safety standards that Americans expect and deserve.”

According to Blumenthal’s office, the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control facility experienced a telecommunications issue on May 11 that forced the FAA to issue a ground stop to all aircraft departing Newark Liberty International Airport for 45 minutes.

That was the third such outage at Newark this month. In response, Duffy announced a reduction in capacity at Newark. Additionally, Denver International Airport experienced a loss of communication with up to 20 aircraft last week when multiple transmitters failed.

In February, the administration of President Donald Trump terminated more than 300 FAA employees that Duffy characterized as not being “critical safety personnel.”

Blumenthal, though, said support staff were critical for passenger safety, even if they weren’t air traffic controllers watching radars and communicating with pilots.

“We need to make repairs and implement backup systems immediately, but we also should staff the towers,” he said.

Blumenthal demanded in his letter that Duffy and the FAA “swiftly take every possible action to ensure air traffic controllers in Newark and around the country can remain in constant radar and radio contact with all aircraft under their control.”

In response to a question about whether residents planning to travel by air should be concerned about the safety of the air traffic control system, Blumenthal referred to airlines delaying and reducing the number of flights. He added that he himself was planning to board a plane Monday afternoon.

“I’m pretty sure planes are safe, but we face a potential safety crisis,” he said.