Delays continue to affect flights at Newark Liberty International Airport Monday morning, averaging about 19 minutes at 9 a.m., according to an advisory from the FAA. For two weeks, short staffing at an air traffic control facility in Philadelphia, which handles flights headed to or departing from the airport, has caused the delays. As CNN previously reported, at least five controllers there took 45 days of trauma leave after losing radar and radio communication during the busy afternoon of April 28. The facility, called PHL TRACON Area C, also saw outages of air traffic control systems early Friday morning and again on Sunday. On Friday at 3:55 a.m. controllers at the facility lost radio contact and radar for about 90 seconds. Then on Sunday, another "telecommunications issue" led to controllers stopping planes heading to Newark from taking off for about 45 minutes while the FAA said it "ensured redundancies were working as designed." In total, there have been at least four outages at PHL TRACON Area C since November, including the three in the last two weeks. "Newark, just so you know, we're all rooting for you for better equipment and more staffing," a pilot radioed the approach controller Sunday, about the same time as flights headed to the airport were stopped. "Hey man, we appreciate it, thanks," the controller responded on the radio frequency recorded by the website LiveATC.net. Newark is not the only FAA facility dealing with equipment problems and short staffing. Separately, Sunday, the FAA slowed air traffic into Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport due to a problem with runway equipment. Some 1,337 flights, which made up 55% of the planes arriving and departing, were delayed, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware. Also Sunday, FAA staffing shortages at the control tower in Austin, Texas, also led to 145 flights, nearly 20%, to be behind schedule. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account atCNN.com
