Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Asked About Flight Capacity Numbers For Newark Airport

During Monday’s press briefing at Newark Airport, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke about flight capacity.

Transcript

00:00Yes.

00:02Thank you. Good afternoon, Secretary.

00:04If you'll forgive me, slightly technical questions.

00:07First, the fiber cable that you said is for telecom,

00:10is that going to deal with some of the radar latency issues

00:13that have been going on between N9D and Philly TRACOM as well,

00:16or is that simply voice communications?

00:20It's both.

00:21It's both. Okay, thank you.

00:22And that 34 an hour that, once the runway is certified,

00:26should be the capacity of the runway layout here,

00:30is that reliant on full staffing at Philly TRACOM,

00:32or is that achievable with what you've got now?

00:34That's achievable with what we have right now.

00:37And, yeah, so we have the capacity,

00:42and now if there's something unforeseen that happens

00:44where we lose controllers for some reason,

00:47we'll scale those numbers back,

00:49but we'll have the staff to go to 34 with the current staffing at Philly TRACOM.

00:57Okay. Yes.

01:00Hi, Jelani Gibson, NJ.com.

01:03Can we get an estimate on what the flights per hour were

01:07before all of the delays started happening?

01:10The theoretical capacity of the airport was about 38 and a half per hour,

01:20so 77 total operations per hour.

01:23Sometimes the day, though, it was scheduled at 80 plus.

01:26That's historically actually been the challenge at Newark,

01:29is that the theoretical maximum was 38 and a half per hour,

01:34and it was scheduled over that.

01:35It would just cause delays that would bleed through the day.

01:37And so that's why this is such a seminal and really turning point

01:41for not just the near term but the long term of Newark,

01:45is because once you philosophically start matching the number of flights

01:50to be equal to the capacity of the airport,

01:52it allows the airport to run reliably as far into the future as you can look.

01:56So this is a really big day.

01:58This agreement that the FAA drove with the airlines is really a turning point

02:05for Newark for the long term.

02:07And so just to be clear, you are four flights per hour away from the operation?

02:12From what it was historically.

02:14Okay, got it.

02:15Okay.

02:16Thank you very much.