Sean Duffy, the Trump administration’s transportation secretary, has revealed that he switched flights for his wife this week to help her avoid flying out of beleaguered Newark Liberty, one of the busiest airports in the New York area.
Duffy’s disclosure on Monday followed his repeated assurances to the American public that it is safe to fly from Newark, despite a spate of dramatic outages affecting the airport’s radar systems that is causing ongoing disruption and delays. On Sunday, the transportation secretary went on NBC News’s Meet the Press and insisted Newark was safe.
“It is,” he protested. “I fly out of Newark all the time, my family flies out of Newark.”
Hours later, speaking to the conservative radio host David Webb on SiriusXM, he said: “My wife was flying out of Newark tomorrow, I switched her flight to LaGuardia”.
A spokesperson for the US Department of Transportation said that the flight was changed for scheduling purposes not for safety reasons. They added: “It’s safe to fly out of Newark. We are fixing the problems.”
Newark Liberty is one of the biggest airports in the New York area and the 12th busiest in the US. In 2023, it served more than 49 million passengers, its heaviest load on record.
For several months the airport has been troubled by technical glitches, combined with a shortage of air traffic controllers and runway construction. In the past two weeks it has suffered three radar outages because of computer problems, traumatizing its staff and causing disruption to flights.
The most serious communications blackout last Friday lasted for 90 seconds, during which time contact was broken between the control tower and planes.
Staff shortages have also become severe. On Monday the airport’s scheduled roster of 14 air traffic controllers was depleted to just three, leading to delays in flights of up to seven hours.
The ongoing travails at Newark have presented Duffy and the Trump administration with a messaging problem. The transportation secretary has tried to offload blame on the previous presidency of Joe Biden, but at the same time he has attempted to reassure passengers and radiate confidence in the future.
His criticisms of the Biden administration prompted a rebuke from his predecessor, Pete Buttigieg. The former transportation secretary said that Duffy “needs to spend more time doing what the American people are paying him to do – fix problems – and less time blaming others”.
Duffy’s challenge has been compounded by the actions of Elon Musk and his government-slashing crew, Doge, which has imposed cuts in staff at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the agency responsible for air safety. Duffy insisted to Meet the Press that none of the staff cuts had involved safety positions such as air traffic controllers, but he did admit that some of those let go had since returned to their posts.
“Elon and I get on really well … He understands the importance of the air space and the need to have good controllers,” Duffy said.
