Hey, this is Flor Lixman, and you're listening to Science Friday.

Today on the show, Inside the Air Traffic Control Tower, when things go wrong.

Anthony Bourdain wrote that being a chef is a lot like being an air traffic controller.

You're one second away from disaster.

Yeah. being an air traffic controller. You're one second away from disaster. You've probably read about the recent outages at the air traffic control center that directs

takeoff and landing for Newark Airport. At the end of April, radar went black for over a minute,

and then a week and a half later, it went down again briefly.

And Newark has caught back on flights in and out. Maybe your flights have been canceled or delayed as a result.

So it made us wonder, how does our air traffic control system work? How do air traffic controllers keep track of the planes in the skies and what is happening

when those systems fail? Here to field those questions and dive into the science of air traffic

control is Dr. Michael McCormick, who worked as an air traffic controller for 10 years and was

a vice president within the Federal Aviation Administration. He's an associate professor at

Emory Riddle Aeronautical University based

in Daytona Beach, Florida. Michael, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you, Florida. It's an absolute

pleasure to be here. Okay. As a former air traffic controller who used to work in the New York

airspace, when this news broke about the outages at Newark, what was your response?

Initially, as I heard about the alleges, I knew about the fact that the approach control services moved from Long Island to Philadelphia.

So I immediately thought something happened in that link, the cause that to Philadelphia. So I immediately thought something happened in that link that caused that to happen.

Tell me more. The approach control services for all the New York metropolitan airports are handled by a

facility on Long Island called the New York TRACON. Last summer, due to staffing issues at the New York Tracon, they moved

a portion of that I approached control from Long Island to Philadelphia, and then they had to link up

the equipment to provide the radar and radio at Philadelphia for the Newark Airspace.

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