Denver International Airport experienced a communication loss with pilots accessing the air traffic control system for about 90 seconds on Monday. Equipment failures were cited as the reason for this incident, raising concerns about potential catastrophic outcomes.
This situation arose just days after Newark Liberty International Airport reported delays due to persistent technical problems, including radar issues faced by air traffic controllers, as highlighted by Breitbart News.
According to reports, the Denver air traffic control center lost communication with pilots around 1:50 PM on Monday. This interruption in service occurred when transmitters covering specific airspace segments failed.
The Longmont center, which handles 285,000 square miles of airspace across nine states—including Wyoming, Kansas, Utah, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, and parts of Arizona—is one of 22 similar facilities in the U.S.
The communication outages impacted both primary and backup frequencies, though radar operations remained unaffected. Frank McIntosh, the FAA’s air traffic control officer, shared these details during a congressional hearing on Thursday, as confirmed by the Associated Press.
The outage has caught public attention, especially given recent scrutiny of the FAA following various accidents, including a tragic midair collision in January that resulted in the deaths of 67 people in Washington, D.C.
Within the last few weeks, Philadelphia’s air traffic control facility—which manages incoming and outgoing flights at Newark Liberty International Airport—has reported two instances of radar and communication failures.
FAA officials attribute some of these challenges to a combination of staffing shortages and aging infrastructure. In response, last week, the Trump administration announced ambitious plans to invest heavily in overhauling the national air traffic control system.
