A 3rd Newark airport outage was prevented by software update: official – National [Video]

A new software update prevented a third radar outage in the last two weeks at New Jersey’s busy Newark airport when a telecommunications line failed again over the weekend, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday.

At a news conference, Duffy also said the recent problems that have led to hundreds of cancellations and delays in Newark could have been avoided had action been taken by President Joe Biden’s administration to better equip the air traffic control facility in Philadelphia — particularly after issues with the hardware in October and November that should have set off alarms.

Duffy said the update the Federal Aviation Administration installed Friday night helped ensure the backup system worked on Sunday when there was another problem with the primary line coming into the air traffic control facility in Philadelphia.

When a similar issue happened Friday and on April 28,the radar and communications systems went offline briefly, leaving controllers unable to see …