Sean Duffy: What Happened in Newark ‘Could Happen Elsewhere,’ Building New ATC Will Take 3 to 4 Years

EXCERPT:

DUFFY: "So, first off, we shouldn’t be surprised. This has been a burning issue over the course of the last decade, but specifically over the last four years. The GAO has reported that of the system was way too antiquated, it needed to be updated. We saw what happened in Newark. That could happen in other places around the infrastructure. So we’re going to build a brand-new air traffic control system. That’s going to take anywhere from three to four years. But to your question, in the Philly TRACON, which controls Newark, we're already up there. We had a primary line that went down, and the secondary line, the redundant line, it didn’t stand up, so we’re working on fixing that, making sure both lines, the primary and the redundant line, are working. But at the same time, we’re laying new fiber in the Philly TRACON to make sure we can stand up the telecom to make sure it never goes down again. And so, this takes a little bit of time. I was told it'd be eight months on the new fiber side of the telecom. I think we can get it to this summer. And again, we’re going to we’re going to deal with what’s happening by trying to stand up more controllers in the Philly TRACON. We're going to get airlines together to talk about how they can reduce capacity at Newark, so if you go to the airport, you’re not going to be delayed for four hours, you're not going to be cancelled. And then we’re gonna get this thing up and running, but it takes little bit of time to do that. Greta."