WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. government watchdog said on Monday it will probe the Federal Aviation Administration’s 2024 decision to relocate control of Newark’s airspace to Philadelphia to address staffing shortages and congested New York City-area traffic.
The Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General is opening the review after two serious outages of communications for air traffic controllers overseeing Newark’s airspace in April and May sparked alarm.
“These events have raised questions about FAA’s management of the relocation, including impacts on system redundancy, controller staffing and training, and operational resilience,” the inspector general’s office said.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chris Reese)