How cascading failures turned Newark airport into a travel hellhole of delays and cancelations

A major glut of delays, cancelations and diversions have beset Newark Liberty International Airport over the last week, nixing hundreds of flights and stranding thousands of travelers at one of the country’s busiest airports.

The chaos, which included a terrifying 90-seconds where air traffic controllers were left without radar and communications on April 28 — was ignited by a burned-out copper wire, resulting in a domino effect that affected thousands of flights in the days to come.

The shocking incident took its toll on the air traffic controllers, at least five of whom took a 45-day trauma leave as a result of the outage, according to CNN.

But the cascading foul-up was the result of numerous points of failure, with the FAA chalking up the issues to everything from staffing shortages at the Philadelphia air traffic control center to a “rehabilitation project” underway that will keep one of the airport’s main runways closed until mid-June.

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