Newark Airport, Newark Airport, one of the three major airports serving New York City, had only three air traffic controllers on Monday, far from 14 requirements and forced air regulators to delay flight arrivals for up to seven hours.

The New York Times first reported shortage of air traffic controllers is emerging on an increasing number of hub issues. Newark suffered three communication power outages in more than a week, leaving the control tower unable to track or communicate with the aircraft for up to 90 seconds.

The latest failure came on Sunday morning, when government and airline officials had worked to re-determine airline passengers as airlines flew to the airport safely.

But, on Monday night, the team managing Air Traffic in Newark, Philadelphia, runs with one or two fully certified controllers - well below the 14 controllers reached between the controller union and the air traffic control regulator.

Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said on Monday that a new software update blocked the previous day’s problems after aviation officials released a 45-minute ground stop.

"It briefly slowed the speed of planes entering and leaving the airport when we ensured jobs were laid off," the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement.

"The operation has returned to normal.''

This comes after Duffy announced plans to reduce the arrivals in Newark in the "next weeks" and will meet with major airlines at the airport to discuss these issues. He said the reduction in flights would target the arrival of international flights.

Duffy said he wanted to raise the mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers from 56 to 61 to offset the shortage of about 3,000 air traffic controllers. After the first failure of Newark on April 28, the union representing air traffic controllers said several members were placed on trauma leave.

"Although we cannot replace them quickly due to this highly specialized profession, we will continue to train controllers and will eventually be assigned to this busy airspace," the FAA said in early May.

Newark's problems appear to be related to the copper wire in the Tracon area C in Philadelphia, which guides the planes into and out of Newark airspace. Tracon is the acronym for terminal radar proximity control facilities.

The FAA has installed new fiber optic lines at Newark Airport and New York's Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport to replace copper wires. However, the plan is to spend the next two weeks testing these new lines before switching to them.

Duffy recently developed a broad plan to replace the country's outdated air traffic control system, including the installation of 4,600 new high-speed data connections and the replacement of 618 radars.

He tried to blame the problems on failures during the Biden administration, which oversees airspace control from Long Island to Philadelphia, which he said was "clumsy".

Pete Buttigieg, spokesman for transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg during Joe Biden's presidency, said Duffy "needs to spend more time doing what the American people pay him to do - solving problems - and less time blaming others."

But the problem is that it brings anxiety to travelers. Hundreds of flights were postponed Sunday at Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta due to runway equipment issues. In late January, an American Airlines plane in Washington, D.C. collided with a military helicopter, killing 67 people. The fatal crash has been blamed on the failure of helicopter pilots to listen to instructions from air traffic controllers.

Despite Newark’s problems, officials are trying to calm airline customers’ concerns, both in terms of technology and in the number of air traffic controllers available.

"It's a problem, but our commitment is always safe," Duffy said Monday. "We will make sure that if you fly, you will fly safely. If we reduce the number of flights in Newark, we won't annoy people. We won't do that to delay people's travel. What we are doing is to keep it safe."

Additionally, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka told MSNBC on Sunday that flight delays and inconveniences from cancellations were offset by stressed safety.

“I would be worried about whether they don’t delay and cancel flights given the massive disruptions we’re seeing,” Baraka said. Baraka said he was pleased that the Trump administration “was rid of the diversity initiative and blamed the problem and “understand the structural issues that exist there, which is the fact that we need more air traffic controllers.”

Frankly, frankly, there are too many aircraft in our airspace. "We need to have the gap between the time the plane leaves and enters the airport. We need fewer planes to fly until we control this.