In March 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration took an unusual step: it asked every airline flying into New York to reduce the number of its daily flights. The request followed a deepening staffing crisis at the Terminal Radar Approach Control facility — known as TRACON — that manages the airspace above New York City. With only 54 percent of its required air traffic controllers in post, the facility was struggling to handle the volume of traffic safely, raising serious concerns about delays and safety heading into the busy summer travel season.
Air traffic controllers are the professionals who guide aircraft through crowded airspace, keeping planes safely separated and sequencing them for arrival and departure at busy airports. The New York TRACON manages one of the most complex and densely trafficked pieces of airspace in the world, directing traffic into and out of John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports as well as dozens of smaller facilities within the wider metropolitan region. When its staffing fell to 54 percent of its target — against a national average that was itself only 81 percent — the pressure on the controllers who remained was severe.
The staffing shortage had roots that went back years. Training a certified professional air traffic controller in the United States typically takes three to five years, a process that cannot be accelerated without compromising safety. Budget constraints at the FAA had slowed the intake of new trainees at the agency’s training academy in Oklahoma City, while a wave of retirements from controllers who had entered the profession in the 1980s was steadily reducing the experienced workforce. Controllers are required to retire at the mandatory age of 56, and their replacements were qualifying too slowly to keep pace.
The consequences of understaffing had already begun to show in early 2023. In February, a series of serious runway incursion incidents at airports across the country prompted the FAA to hold a nationwide Safety Call to Action — an urgent review of aviation safety culture and procedures. While not all of the incidents were directly attributable to staffing levels, regulators acknowledged that a thinly stretched controller workforce increased the risk of errors, particularly in high-pressure environments such as the New York TRACON.
On 22 March 2023, the FAA issued a formal notice waiving the slot usage requirements at New York-area airports for the summer season, from 15 May to 15 September. Under normal rules, airlines must use their allocated take-off and landing slots at least a minimum number of times or risk losing them permanently to competitors. The waiver allowed carriers to voluntarily reduce their New York schedules by approximately 10 percent during peak hours without penalty. Even with those reductions in place, officials projected that delays at New York airports could increase by 45 percent compared with the previous summer.
For passengers, the outlook raised the prospect of fewer flight options, longer waits, and greater uncertainty about departure times. Airlines began revising their summer timetables, focusing cuts on high-frequency routes where multiple daily services made it easier to trim without eliminating connections. Leisure travellers were advised to book off-peak departures or consider alternative airports, while business passengers faced reduced choice on time-sensitive routes.
To address the underlying problem, the FAA announced it would transfer responsibility for the Newark radar sector to the Philadelphia TRACON, with training for the handover set to begin in September 2023. The agency also committed to accelerating the hiring and certification of new controllers. In Congress, transport committee members called for emergency funding to speed up recruitment and reduce the backlog of trainees awaiting their final certifications — though officials acknowledged that rebuilding the controller workforce to full strength could take many years.
Key vocabulary:
- Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) – a facility that uses radar to guide aircraft arriving at and departing from airports within a defined region; the New York TRACON serves JFK, LaGuardia and Newark as well as surrounding airports
- slot – a scheduled take-off or landing time at a congested airport, assigned to an airline by regulators to manage the flow of traffic
- slot usage requirement – a rule requiring airlines to use their allocated take-off and landing slots at least a minimum percentage of the time; failure to do so can result in the slot being reassigned to a competitor
- certified professional controller – an air traffic controller who has passed all required training and can work independently without supervision; the qualification process in the United States typically takes three to five years
- runway incursion – an event in which an aircraft, vehicle or person enters a runway without authorisation, creating a risk of collision with an aircraft that is taking off or landing
CEFR Level B2 / ICAO Level 5