The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating how pilots flying into Denver International Airport temporarily lost contact with air traffic controllers on Monday.
The FAA told FOX Business that part of the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) experienced a loss of communications for approximately 90 seconds around 1:50 p.m. local time on Monday after both transmitters that cover a segment of airspace went down.
Sources told Denver7 that as many as 20 pilots were unable to speak with ATC. However, the FAA said the controllers used another frequency to relay instructions to pilots and that the aircraft remained safely separated. Controllers used another frequency to relay instructions to pilots, and there were no impacts to operations, the FAA added.
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According to its website, the Denver ARTCC covers approximately 285,000 square miles of airspace over some or all of the following states: Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana.
The air traffic control system has been under immense pressure for years, given the persisting staffing shortages, outdated technology and underinvestment in critical infrastructure. These shortfalls have come into focus in recent weeks as New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport, the second-busiest airport in the New York airport system, had back-to-back outages within a two-week period, each lasting about 90 seconds.
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Air traffic controllers at the FAA facility in Philadelphia lost radar and radio communications while directing planes to Newark at the end of April and for a second time in May. Air traffic controllers at the Philadelphia TRACON facility work on Newark arrivals and departures.
Aside from the longstanding issues with the air traffic control system, Newark’s challenges have been further strained by ongoing construction at the airport, which leaves it temporarily operating with only one of two parallel runways.
In a previous statement to FOX Business, the FAA acknowledged that the “antiquated air traffic control system is affecting our workforce.”
Following the first outage at Newark, the FAA began working to improve the reliability of operations at the airport, including accelerating technological and logistical improvements and increasing controller staffing.
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It began slowing arrivals and departures at the airport to account for staffing and technology issues at the Philadelphia TRACON facility.
In the meantime, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and acting Administrator Chris Rocheleau announced a slew of initiatives to improve operations in Newark and build an all-new, state-of-the-art air traffic control system.
Among their objectives, Duffy and Rocheleau are looking to add three new high-bandwidth telecommunications connections between the New York-based STARS and Philadelphia TRACON, which they believe will improve speed, reliability and redundancy.
STARS is an FAA system that processes radar data for Newark and is based in New York. Telecommunications lines feed this data from New York to the Philadelphia TRACON.
Duffy projected that building an all-new, state-of-the-art air traffic control system will take three to four years.
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