Trump's transport secretary's astonishing verdict about Newark Airport safety... hours after ANOTHER blackout

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy insists flying retired of Newark Airport is wholly harmless conscionable hours aft the latest blackout caused a astir hour-long crushed halt for flights successful and retired of New Jersey.

Still, Duffy conceded that flights retired of Newark Liberty International Airport request to beryllium scaled backmost successful the aftermath of a bid of incidents that person near Americans wary of aerial travel.

President Donald Trump's caput of the Department of Transportation said connected Sunday greeting that helium continues to 'fly retired of Newark each the time.'

But that aforesaid greeting the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates aerial question successful the U.S., implemented a crushed halt for each Newark flights owed to an outage of aerial postulation power equipment.

The 45-minute crushed halt comes aft 2 abstracted 90-second-long radar and vigor outages successful the span of 2 weeks connected April 28 and May 9 astatine Newark's airport.

Now, conscionable 2 days aft the radar outage connected Friday, Newark was forced to instrumentality a crushed halt connected Mother's day.

As of Friday astatine 4:00 p.m., determination were 140 flights canceled and different 401 delayed aft the latest radar outage, according to Flightaware.

When aerial postulation controllers' radar screens went acheronian for a minute-and-a-half aboriginal Friday greeting it astir became a midair catastrophe – but luckily it was astatine 3:55 a.m. erstwhile aerial question is precise light.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released a connection to X revealing the blackout was caused by a 'telecommunications outage' astatine Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) Area C.

Still, Duffy is optimistic astir aerial question to and from the New Jersey airdrome contempt expanding incidents.

'Is it harmless to alert successful and retired of Newark airdrome close now?' NBC Meet the Press big Kristen Welker asked the Transportation Secretary.

He assured Americans: 'It is.'

'I alert retired of Newark each the time. My household flies retired of Newark,' Duffy added. 'And conscionable erstwhile we saw these 2 incidents… erstwhile we person issues, determination are policies and procedures successful spot for controllers and for pilots. They cognize what to do. It is not ideal, by immoderate stretch.'

'We person to hole it, though. This is an American issue, and it's going to beryllium an American legislature priority, I think, successful this coming year, to get america the wealth to bash the 3 oregon four-year physique that it's going to instrumentality to get this completed,' helium said.

Equipment is outdated and Duffy says much wealth needs to beryllium allotted to bash updates astatine airports and aerial postulation power towers.

'I'm acrophobic astir the full airspace, right?' helium said successful his Sunday greeting interrogation with NBC News. 'The instrumentality that we use, overmuch of it we can't bargain parts for new. We person to spell connected eBay and bargain parts if 1 portion goes down. You're dealing with truly aged equipment. We're dealing with copper wires, not fiber, not high-speed fiber. And truthful this is concerning.'

'Is it safe? Yes, we person redundancies, aggregate redundancies successful spot to support you harmless erstwhile you fly,' Duffy insisted. 'But we should besides admit we're seeing accent connected an aged network, and it's clip to hole it.'

Welker asked Duffy if determination is simply a request to 'scale back' flights coming successful and retired of the Newark airdrome portion problems are addressed and fixes implemented.

'One 100 percent,' the DOT caput said. 'So we really person brought down the fig of airplanes that travel successful and permission Newark because, listen, our ngo is safety.'

He admitted that this volition pb to a log jam of travelers going into and retired of the airdrome liable for a batch of question to America's biggest metropolis – New York.

'I hatred delays. I hatred cancellations. And I hatred families who travel with small kids that are sitting determination for 4 hours. I've done that myself connected occasion. It's hard,' Duffy said. 'But I privation you to get to wherever you're traveling. And if that means slowing down flights into Newark, we dilatory them down to marque definite we tin bash it safely.'