Sean Duffy: Too Many Planes Flying In And Out Of Newark Now

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Sunday that flights to the busy Newark airport need to be scaled back as it continues to weather a web of staffing issues, mechanical malfunctions and flight cancellations.

"We lost a few controllers who were stressed out by the first connectivity that we lost last week. And so we have less controllers working the Newark airspace right now," Duffy told NBC's Kristen Welker on "Meet the Press." "And, you know, we're having these glitches in the system. So we slow it down and keep people safe."

Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, one of the country's busiest, on Friday fended off yet another communications outage — its second in just weeks — terrifying air traffic controllers and resulting in major disruptions for the flying public.

Then on Sunday, another communications issue caused a ground stop to be initiated at the airport.

"There was a telecommunications issue at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport airspace," the FAA said in a statement. "The FAA briefly slowed aircraft in and out of the airport while we ensured redundancies were working as designed."

Duffy's recorded interview aired around the same as word of the Sunday issue came to the fore.

Airlines are taking note. Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines, in early May announced his company would be canceling 35 round-trip flights per day from its Newark schedule. Over one-fifth of the airport's air traffic controllers had walked off the job, he said in a message to customers.

And Duffy isn't worried just about the connectivity issues facing Newark.

"I'm concerned about the whole airspace, right? The equipment that we use, much of it we can't buy parts for new," he said. "We have to go on eBay and buy parts if one part goes down. You're dealing with really old equipment. We're dealing with copper wires, not fiber, not high-speed fiber. And so this is concerning."

The continued turmoil in Newark comes just after Duffy last week pitched an aggressive multibillion-dollar airport infrastructure modernization plan, with an eye towards replacing dated telecommunications equipment with state-of-the-art fiber or satellite technology, among other planned upgrades.

Duffy has said the modernization effort could take three or four years. But his plan didn't include a price tag.

The Modern Skies Coalition, which consists of many key aviation industry groups, says it could cost more than $31 billion, a far cry from the $12.5 billion Congress is seeking to pay in the next several years.

In the meantime?

"When we saw these two incidents, when we have issues, there are policies and procedures in place for controllers and for pilots," Duffy told Welker. "They know what to do. It is not ideal, by any stretch, but they do implement those procedures, and they stay away from each other, and they, and we vacate the airspace. And, again, we have to fix it."

Oriana Pawlyk contributed to this report.