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FAA air-traffic controller opens up about stress, staffing and tech problems at facility overseeing airspace around Newark, N.J.

Several controllers have taken stress-related leave after tech outages, creating potential disruptions for travelers.

The FAA is pursuing various short- and long-term improvements for the Philadelphia facility that oversees Newark airspace.

MALVERN, Pa.—Jonathan Stewart was into his fourth hour overseeing the planes flying near Newark, N.J., when he noticed two aircraft speeding nose-to-nose on his radar scope.

A business jet that had departed the Morristown airport was heading toward another small plane that had taken off from nearby Teterboro, a hub for corporate flying. A midair collision was potentially seconds away with planes flying at the same altitude.

The veteran air-traffic controller had been scribbling callsigns for the planes and flight information in a notebook, worried that radar and radio communication might fail as they had days earlier. After recognizing the unfolding conflict, he instructed the pilots to turn the planes away from each other, which they did.

But Stewart, 45 years old, was badly shaken. Hours after the May 4 incident, he fired off an email to Federal Aviation Administration managers, criticizing their leadership. “I take my job very seriously, as I do the safety of the flying public, and take pride in my performance,” he wrote.

For years, the FAA has struggled to fully staff air-traffic facilities and keep critical technology running. Frustrated with the current work situation and his own close call, Stewart took stress-related trauma leave, a benefit available for controllers.

“I don’t want to be responsible for killing 400 people,” he said in an interview.

Controllers rarely speak to the media publicly, especially without the supervision of public-affairs officials. Stewart said he wanted to set the record straight about controllers who he said had been demonized in news coverage.

Jonathan Stewart, an FAA air traffic control specialist, sits for a portrait at Main Line Armory in Malvern, PA., on Monday May 12 2025.
Jonathan Stewart said the controllers who manage Newark airspace need more resources to effectively do their jobs.
Several controllers Stewart works with have also taken leave, some after tech glitches temporarily interrupted their radios, radar and backups—incidents they feared could have catastrophic outcomes.

Controller absences and equipment problems have roiled the FAA’s air-traffic operation. They have also resulted in flight delays and deep disruptions at Newark Liberty International Airport and elsewhere. This week, an air-traffic facility near Denver lost communications for 90 seconds, an incident that the agency is investigating.

The FAA said it is pursuing short- and long-term fixes for controllers who oversee Newark airspace. Those initiatives include installing a temporary backup telecommunication system, more-reliable connections and a new radar system based in Philadelphia.

The agency also said it was limiting flights to the airport and has a healthy training pipeline to boost staffing.

Stewart doesn’t work at an airport tower. He’s a supervisor at a facility known as a Tracon, or Terminal Radar Approach Control. In addition to handling traffic for smaller regional airports, the Philadelphia site oversees planes approaching Newark. In a dimly lighted room, he toggles between supervising other controllers and obsessively tracking the moving dots representing aircraft on radar scopes.

“It’s like a videogame, but it’s like playing 3-D chess at 250 miles an hour,” he said. “We are the guys that are guiding your pilots home.”

The air-traffic control workforce is largely unionized, and controllers like Stewart at busy FAA facilities are well paid. Stewart, who isn’t in the controllers’ union, said he is on track this year to earn over $450,000, including overtime. Highly skilled controllers deserve to make that much without grueling hours, he said.

“You’re sacrificing a lot for that,” Stewart said. There are 60-hour workweeks, but also “you give up nights, weekends, holidays, birthdays, everything else. Your mental health and your physical health take a toll.”

Stewart said controllers aren’t to blame for all the recent delays and disruptions in and out of Newark. Controllers hadn’t “walked off the job,” as United Airlines Chief Executive Scott Kirby said in a recent letter to customers.

The comment was “insulting at best and just quite frankly misinformed,” Stewart said. Safety events, he said, might not be stressful initially. “But the thing about PTSD is this: For every time you have an incident—say a close call, a near-midair, God forbid—all of these things are cumulative,” he said.

A United spokesman pointed to Kirby’s more recent statements calling for better equipment and working conditions for air-traffic controllers.

Stewart, who noted he wasn’t speaking on behalf of the FAA, said the controllers who manage Newark airspace are elite but need more resources to effectively do their jobs.

Adrenaline rush


The air-traffic facility where Stewart and other controllers oversee airspace surrounding Newark, N.J., from Philadelphia.
Stewart spent part of Monday afternoon shooting his pistols at an indoor range in this Philadelphia suburb. In a lounge appointed with a fireplace and Chesterfield chairs, he enjoyed cigars and Johnnie Walker Blue Label scotch. He goes there for stress relief.

Hard-charging, confident and at times brash, Stewart said he also spends free time at the gym and riding his motorcycle.

A native of Pensacola, Fla., he got his start in air-traffic control while in the U.S. Air Force. He knew little then about the field.

The adrenaline rush hooked him, said Stewart, and the job’s high stakes. “It’s effing fun, man…You play God because you cannot fail,” he said. “You cannot make a mistake.”


Stewart spent about a decade in the Air Force. His service experience allowed him to bypass the typical civilian route of going through the FAA’s air-traffic controller training academy in Oklahoma City.

Over more than 25 years, Stewart has worked at several civilian and military air-traffic facilities, including those in Miami and in New York. Philadelphia was added to the list after the FAA last year moved oversight of Newark’s airspace from Long Island, N.Y. The agency’s move aimed to address years of chronic understaffing.

The staffing situation hasn’t yet improved. A string of tech outages prompted some controllers to take trauma leave, further imperiling staffing levels and making training harder.

Breaking point
Stewart sees staffing as among the biggest problems in air-traffic control. Thin ranks of controllers limit how many aircraft can be managed effectively, he said.

He prefers controllers spending no more than two hours actively working traffic. Otherwise, it’s easy to lose focus and get tired.

“Like anything else, you’re going to have a breaking point,” Stewart said.

‘We are the guys that are guiding your pilots home,’ said Jonathan Stewart.
‘We are the guys that are guiding your pilots home,’ said Jonathan Stewart.
In Stewart’s close call earlier this month, he worked more than three hours without a break, according to an internal safety report viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

“The situation is, has been and continues to be unsafe,” Stewart wrote in the report. He also said: “The amount of stress we are under is insurmountable.”

The FAA, which is reviewing the safety report, said it treats all such reports seriously and takes necessary action.

Stewart said he spoke with senior FAA officials ahead of an interview with the Journal. The agency, he said, seems to be taking steps to ease staffing and other problems facing controllers who oversee the Newark airspace.

“For the first time that I’m aware of, they are throwing money at the problem,” Stewart said.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has announced an effort to broadly overhaul the nation’s air-traffic system and asked Congress for billions of dollars to make it happen. Duffy has said the Philadelphia facility would be given priority.

On Monday, Duffy said a software patch last weekend prevented a radar outage.

Congested airspace and failure-prone tech aren’t the only challenges the Newark-area controllers face. Helping aircraft navigate through winds from the Adirondacks to the north and around the Hudson River poses unique challenges.

Getting from the classroom to working live traffic there can take a few years—“and that’s assuming that you can do it,” he said.

Stewart’s time away from work might be limited. His leave entitles him to up to 45 days of regular pay. A return to controller duties will depend on a medical evaluation.

Asked what else he would like to say publicly, Stewart responded: “I would like to add that I’m tired and I want to go take a nap.”

Write to Andrew Tangel at andrew.tangel@wsj.com

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Appeared in the May 16, 2025, print edition as 'Air-Traffic Controller Shaken by Close Call'.


LINK: https://www.wsj.com/business/a...dingnow_article_pos1

Deserve to earn $450K annually without working a lot of grueling hours? Sign me up for that job.

In all seriousness, there are some valid points here and the ATC system is ready for an overhaul.

Seems like an AI opportunity?

quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:
Seems like an AI opportunity?

Not till we get off china’s supply chain. And probably not even then. I’m in several automotive pages on Facebook and people who think they’re helping share the google ai guidance for a question that is hilariously off the mark. I realize there is tiers to it but the day air traffic gets fully automated is the day I stick to the highway.

I worked for the FAA for 29 years as a controller at Denver ARTCC. We were NEVER fully staffed at any point in my career. It isn't a job that most people are capable of or comfortable with. It takes 2-3 years to get trained, and then a few years to actually get seasoned enough to excel at the work. The shift work is also extremely taxing..like LE and other professions struggle with. The complexity of the work, the equipment required, and dealing with weather conditions are extremely dynamic. I would never feel safe with only computers providing the separation services. The DEI hires did not help this situation at all. The equipment was always being updated with constant training on new systems. The redundancy required is crippling when developing new systems.

I have zero experience with air traffic control systems, but I do have experience with high availability distributed control systems for oil and gas. At one point in my career I was an engineer supporting one of these control centers.

Our technicians work on a redundant off-line System for installing and testing hardware and software updates/upgrades while our operators at the control console work on the online system. Is that the way air traffic control systems work?

We typically have grid power, battery power and generator power for our control center. Is that the way air traffic control centers work?

Our alarms are automated but we have to implement alarm management so that we do not fatigue/overload the operator at the console. The alarm management is all software. Granted the operator has years of training and has to have a feel for what they're operating and the automation. Is that the way air traffic control systems work?

In a control center, we typically have multiple operations consoles (one operator at each) with one supervisor at a supervisory console that can oversee the other consoles and take over if necessary. Is that the way air traffic control systems work?

For High criticality safety or process sensors/Devices we typically have redundant or triple redundant sensors/Devices on different Data circuits on different data pathways back to the control center. Is that the way air traffic control systems work?