Staff shortages and equipment failures at Newark Liberty International Airport have raised safety concerns in recent weeks.

The interim rule will cap the number of arrivals and departures at Newark Liberty International Airport at 28 apiece per hour. That’s in line with the limits imposed after about half a dozen controllers went on a 45-day trauma leave following the first outage on April 28.

Another radio outage took place for planes at Newark Airport in New Jersey on Monday, adding to a growing list of equipment malfunctions at the busy travel center. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said that Philadelphia TRACON Area C – which has taken over the duties of separating and sequencing aircraft in and out of Newark Airport – experienced a brief radio outage for approximately two seconds around 11:35 a.

A meeting to discuss reducing the number of flights at Newark Liberty International Airport resumed Friday in the wake of critical air traffic control problems around the metro New York hub and other US airports.

Newsday spoke to experts who said that the direct cause of Newark’s blackout was unique, but the region's other airports like Long Island MacArthur, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy face some of the same underlying issues — like dated equipment and a long-term shortage of air traffic controllers.

Yes, President Trump and Elon Musk and DOGE aren’t doing travelers any favors, but a scarcity of air-traffic controllers has existed for years. Newark airport has become ground zero for the issue through a confluence of events — events that haven’t actually happened at Newark airport.