The FAA said in a statement that the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center lost communications for approximately 90 seconds. McIntosh said both the primary and main backup frequencies went down, so the controllers had to turn to an emergency frequency to communicate.
“Controllers used another frequency to relay instructions to pilots. Aircraft remained safely separated and there were no impacts to operations,” the FAA said.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California told McIntosh during the hearing that “anytime there’s these outages which are happening now more regularly, it’s very concerning.”
“We know that there are staffing and equipment problems at air traffic control,” Garcia said. “We know that the problems have gone back decades in some cases, but it’s still an absolutely shocking system failure and we need immediate solutions.”
The FAA was in the middle of a second day Thursday of meetings with the airlines that fly out of Newark about cutting flights because there aren’t enough controllers to handle all the flights on the schedule now. More than 100 flights have been canceled at Newark Thursday.
