The Blubber

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says the Federal Aviation Administration is relying on equipment so outdated that it’s had to source replacement parts from eBay.

In light of a series of technical failures at Newark Liberty International Airport, Duffy warned that the aging air traffic control infrastructure is threatening the reliability of the entire national airspace system.

"I'm concerned about the whole airspace right now," Duffy said during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press that aired Sunday. “A lot of the equipment we use is so old, you can’t get new parts—we’re actually having to go on eBay to find replacements. That’s how outdated this system is.”

On Friday, Newark suffered its second radar outage in two weeks. A radar system at a Philadelphia facility that guides aircraft departing from Newark briefly went offline for 90 seconds. A similar outage occurred on April 28. As a result, Newark saw at least 73 delays and 82 flight cancellations on Monday, according to FlightAware, and Duffy warned that disruptions could continue for several weeks.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) blamed the repeated failures on crumbling infrastructure and understaffing. He noted that only about 20 air traffic controllers are currently working at the airport—about one-third of what’s needed.

The FAA pointed to a statement on its website that attributed delays to runway construction at Newark and staffing and technology issues at the Philadelphia TRACON facility. However, the agency did not comment on the reported eBay part purchases or the safety protocols in place for such transactions.

“This is deeply concerning,” Duffy said. “Is it safe to fly? Yes. We have multiple layers of redundancy built into the system. But we’re clearly seeing stress on a network that’s decades old. It’s long past time to modernize.”

Duffy emphasized that while air travel remains statistically the safest mode of transportation, the FAA’s technology is stuck in the past. Some equipment is as much as 25 to 50 years old and still uses copper wiring instead of fiber-optic cables.

A 2024 Government Accountability Office report found that over 35% of the FAA’s 138 air traffic control systems are “unsustainable,” lacking both funding and viable replacements. The report identified several mission-critical systems that are two to five decades old, with upgrades unlikely to begin before 2030—if they happen at all.