When Newark Airport made all the news some weeks back, I postponed my work trip to NYC an decided I'd take the train if I had to go anyway. Many folks were delayed and stranded for hours there but the level of disaster suggested in this article seems unwarranted. The root causes for the calamity are numerous but none seem to be unsolvable.
It is a combination decades of underinvestment in infrastructure, insufficient pay and retention for air traffic controllers, delayed modernization projects (a problem endemic to any large enterprise pubic or private sector), and a lack of redundancy in critical systems. Despite promises of upgrades and new hires, the FAA continues to struggle with chronic resource shortages, bureaucratic inertia, and a system that is stretched to the breaking point.
To be optimistic about this, as someone who does not have the option to give up air-travel, I want to believe that these near-misses served as the much needed wake-up call. It would be an incredible tragedy if much worse had to happen before the the powers that be took action. Maybe I am stupidly hopeful because I don't want to live in fear all the time - my loved ones have to travel for work, they have no choice, my parents live in India and I have to go see them no matter what. I prefer to have faith (as illogical and unscientific as it is), that the calamity will not be nearly as complete and widespread at the author prognosticates.
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