Brian Lairn on WNYC.

Now we turn to the turbulence at Newark Airport, causing frustration for travelers and workers alike.

It's not just about the delays and cancel flights. Last week,

the air traffic system connecting controllers and pilots shut down for an undisclosed period of time,

somewhere between 30 and 90 seconds, it seems. Air traffic controllers lost the ability to locate

planes on radar or communicate with pilots in the Newark airspace.

How scary is that?

Take a listen to a fraught exchange between an air traffic controller and a pilot of a small plane during that outage.

No, you do not have a bravo clearance.

We lost our radar and it's not working correctly.

Radar service terminates, block B. If you want a bravo clearance, you can just call the towers

and get closer. Okay, I'll wait for that frequency from you, okay? Okay, no. This

squawcby if you are, look up the tower frequencies, and we don't have a radar, so I don't know where you are. We don't have a radar, so we don't know where you are.

Yikes, not the kind of conversation you want the folks responsible for keeping you safe in the air to be having, right?

And the stress of that incident resulted, among other things, in five air traffic controllers going on trauma leave for 45 days. As a result, Newark has seen those major delays, creating a boiling pot of frustrated

passengers and staff inside the airport's walls. Joining me now to take us behind the scenes of the

chaos at Newark Airport is Pete Munteen. He's a CNN correspondent covering aviation and transportation

for the network. He's also a pilot and flight instructor himself, so he's bringing that perspective to his

reporting on this incident as well.

Pete, thank you so much for giving us some time today.

Welcome to WNYC.

Thanks, Brian.

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