‘Really a mess’: America’s air traffic control system suffering from years of neglect

Roots of the crisis go back to Reagan but Musk’s Doge team accused of making things worse – can it be fixed?

Twice in the past two weeks, communications between air traffic controllers and airplanes at Newark Liberty, one of the US’s busiest airports, have failed – leaving controllers unable to communicate with pilots.

The outages have, thankfully, only led to massive delays, not disaster. But they have also once again focused a harsh light on the persistent safety problems at US airports, which handle over 50,000 flights a day.

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