Latest news with #JonathanStewart
Yahoo
16-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Ex-Oregon RB takes shot at USC after Dan Lanning troll job
The post Ex-Oregon RB takes shot at USC after Dan Lanning troll job appeared first on ClutchPoints. Oregon football engaged itself in a fierce battle with USC on the college football recruiting trail. Cannonball references have centered around the Oregon-USC rivalry. But one ex-Ducks star has heard enough from USC and defended Dan Lanning. Advertisement Kenjon Barner called out the rival on the Ducks of a Feather podcast. Barner joined fellow former Oregon RB Jonathan Stewart in calling out the Trojans. Especially after USC trolled Lanning for jumping into a pool with a five-star commit — who later reopened his recruiting process. 'All you're doing is running your mouth. Your bark is louder than your bite,' Barner said to USC. 'You guys haven't been relevant since Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush.' The 'cannonball' from USC's side came after a five-star commitment. Tight end Mark Bowman chose USC — leading to the Trojans' football X account to play a clip from Will Ferrell's 'Anchorman' in which he jumps into a pool. Ex-Oregon RB fires 1 more message to USC Ben Lonergan/The Register-Guard / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images Barner faced the Trojans before both programs joined the Big Ten. The Trojans and Ducks engaged in epic battles as Pac-12 Conference foes. Barner was a part of that. Advertisement He's best revered by Ducks fans for shredding USC for 321 rushing yards in a 2012 win. Barner also scored five touchdowns in that 62-51 shootout win. He tried to claim one more win over USC. By sending one last fiery message to Trojan fans and their team. 'My advice to SC fans: humble yourselves, get quiet and win more than seven games,' Barner said. 'SC keep fighting on, baby. You all been fighting for a long time.' Both teams will more than likely attract a national audience come Nov. 22 in Eugene. USC travels to Oregon for a crucial conference showdown. The recruiting stories are bound to help fuel the matchup. Advertisement There's more on Oregon's side too that ignites the rivalry. The Ducks lost two verbal commits to their rival in Jonas Williams and Tomuhini Topui during the spring. Related: Elite 2028 QB high on Michigan football after recent offer Related: Bryce Underwood earns 'mature' claim from Michigan football teammate
CBS News
06-06-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Air traffic controller says he won't fly out of Newark Airport after harrowing equipment failures
Air traffic controller says he won't fly out of Newark Airport after equipment failures Air traffic controller says he won't fly out of Newark Airport after equipment failures Air traffic controller says he won't fly out of Newark Airport after equipment failures A Newark air traffic controller says he's not sure if he'll ever return to the job after several equipment failures caused some air traffic controllers to lose communication with pilots in late April and May. Jonathan Stewart and several of his colleagues who handle Newark's airspace took trauma leave after the harrowing incidents. Stewart said the reason he's unsure whether he'll go back is because of the stress. CBS News New York investigator Tim McNicholas spoke to Stewart in an exclusive interview. "I yelled some choice words, I actually cried a little bit" Stewart says as he tries to de-stress, he's spending more time on his hobbies, like shooting at his favorite range. "I'll tell you, the biggest thing for me was just sleep. Like getting on some sort of regular sleep once the nightmares subsided like a week ago," he said. Stewart says up until about a week ago, he had been having nightmares about plane crashes, triggered by an incident involving two planes that took off from Teterboro and Morristown on May 3. The Air Force veteran says he saw the planes were at risk of a head-on, midair collision and alerted the pilots in time for them to move, but it was far too close for his comfort. "I yelled some choice words. I actually cried a little bit, I'm not gonna lie. I was really angry. Because I don't make mistakes like that," Stewart said. He says he was overworked from staffing shortages and distracted because, even though the radar was working that day, he was also tracking planes using a pen and paper as a precaution. That's because on April 28, before his shift, Stewart's colleagues lost radar and communications with planes in Newark's airspace for 30-90 seconds, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. "What was it like when you got there that day?" McNicholas asked. "It was bad ... There were guys pacing around on the phone trying to figure out what was going on. I walked in, one of the supervisors was talking to himself and sweating profusely," Stewart said. It was one of several concerning equipment failures Newark's air traffic controllers dealt with in late April and May. "It's not fair to blame the Trump administration. It's not fair to blame the Biden administration. If you're gonna blame somebody, you blame Reagan and everybody after him because nobody has done anything meaningful up until this point," Stewart said. "I personally am not gonna fly out of Newark" The FAA says it is taking steps to try to improve air traffic communications and prevent further outages, including a recent software update and a reduction in the airport's flight schedules. Stewart says, after talking with an FAA official this week, he's more optimistic about the agency's plans to hire and train more controllers. "Cautiously optimistic. I personally am not gonna fly out of Newark. To each their own," Stewart said. "Because I'm not satisfied with the level of safety. Until I see it in action and I know for sure that the steps that are being taken will effectively mitigate risks to as little as possible." United States Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said it is safe to fly out of Newark. "Because we have such a great team that focuses day in and day out on the flying public safety," he said on June 2. Stewart says the FAA worsened controller challenges last summer when it relocated Stewart and 23 other Newark Liberty International Airport controllers from a facility on Long Island to Philadelphia. A CBS News New York investigation revealed that move caused 817 Newark flight delays within the first two weeks of the relocation as the controllers settled in. Stewart describes those first two weeks as "chaotic." That rollout has drawn bi-partisan criticism. In early May, Sen. Chuck Schumer said he believed the move to Philadelphia "made the problem worse," and Duffy has said fiber lines should have been laid before the move. Stewart has a more personal criticism. "The way that they did this, you take us away from our families, away from all of our friends, away from our coworkers that we have camaraderie with, that we work well with, and you put us in another state," he said. The FAA says there are currently 14 experienced controllers in training for Newark and the agency hopes to get them fully certified and on the job at various points over the coming months. The agency also hopes to activate a new fiber line in early July to improve Newark's air traffic communications. Stewart says he is not sure if he'll ever feel comfortable returning to work at the FAA. He made sure to clarify multiple times that everything he shared is his opinion, not the FAA's. Stewart says he feels that flying in the U.S. is still, overall, the safest way to travel. The FAA did not respond to CBS News New York's request for comment on this story.
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The crisis in American air travel, explained by Newark airport
Air travel is such a common part of modern life that it's easy to forget all the miraculous technology and communication infrastructure required to do it safely. But recent crashes, including near Washington, DC, and in San Diego — not to mention multiple near misses — have left many fliers wondering: Is it still safe to fly? That concern is particularly acute at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, which has recently experienced several frightening incidents and near misses in as radio and radar systems have gone dark. This has left an under-staffed and overworked group of air traffic controllers to manage a system moving at a frenetic pace with no room for error. Andrew Tangel, an aviation reporter for the Wall Street Journal, recently spoke to Jonathan Stewart, a Newark air traffic controller. In early May, Stewart experienced a brief loss of the systems showing him the locations of the many planes was directing. When the systems came back online, he realized there'd almost been a major crash. According to Tangel, Stewart 'sent off a fiery memo to his managers, complaining about how he was put in that situation, which he felt he was being set up for failure.' Stewart now is taking trauma leave because of the stresses of the job. After many delayed flights, United Airlines just announced that it will move some of its flights to nearby John F. Kennedy International Airport. To understand how we arrived at our current aviation crisis, Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Darryl Campbell, an aviation safety writer for The Verge. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. You recently wrote about all these — and your take was that this isn't just a Newark, New Jersey, problem. It's systemic. Why? You've probably seen some of the news articles about it, and it's really only in the last couple months because everybody's been paying attention to aviation safety that people are really saying, Oh my gosh! Newark airport is losing the ability to see airplanes. They're losing radar for minutes at a time, and that's not something you want to hear when you have airplanes flying towards each other at 300 miles an hour. So it is rightfully very concerning. But the thing is, what's been happening at Newark has actually been happening for almost a decade and a half in fits and starts. It'll get really bad, and then it'll get better again. Now we're seeing a combination of air traffic control problems; we're seeing a combination of infrastructure problems, and they've got a runway that's entirely shut down. And the way that I think about it is, while Newark is its own special case today, all of the problems that it's facing, other than the runway, are problems that every single airport in the entire country is going to be facing over the next five to 10 years, and so we're really getting a preview of what's going to happen if we don't see some drastic change in the way that the air traffic control system is maintained. We heard about some of these issues after the crash at DCA outside Washington. What exactly is going on with air traffic controllers? The first problem is just one of staff retention and training. On the one hand, the air traffic control system and the people who work there are a pretty dedicated bunch, but it takes a long time to get to the point where you're actually entrusted with airplanes. It can be up to four years of training from the moment that you decide, Okay, I want to be an air traffic controller. Couple that with the fact that these are government employees and like many other agencies, they haven't really gotten the cost-of-living increases to keep pace with the actual cost of living, especially in places like the New York and New Jersey area, where it's just gone up way faster than in the rest of the country. This is bad at Newark, but you say it promises to get bad everywhere else too. The cost of living is still outpacing the replacement level at a lot of these air traffic control centers. And the washout rate is pretty high. We've seen the average staffing level at a lot of American airports get down below 85, 80 percent, which is really where the FAA wants it to be, and it's getting worse over time. At Newark in particular, it's down to about 58 percent as of the first quarter of this year. This is an emergency level of staffing at a baseline. And then on top of that, you have — in order to keep the airplanes going — people working mandatory overtime, mandatory six-days-a-week shifts, and that's accelerating that burnout that naturally happens. There's a lot of compression and a lot of bad things happening independently, but all at the same time in that kind of labor system that's really making it difficult to both hire and retain qualified air traffic controllers. These sound like very fixable problems, Darryl. Are we trying to fix them? I know former reality TV star and Fox News correspondent — and transportation secretary, in this day and age — Sean Duffy has been out to Newark. He said this: 'What we are going to do when we get the money. We have the plan. We actually have to build a brand new state-of-the-art, air traffic control system.' To his credit, they have announced some improvements on it. They've announced a lot of new funding for the FAA. They've announced an acceleration of hiring, but it's just a short-term fix. To put it in context, the FAA's budget usually allocates about $1.7 billion in maintenance fees every year. And so they've announced a couple billion more dollars, but their backlog already is $5.2 billion in maintenance. And these are things like replacing outdated systems, replacing buildings that are housing some of these radars, things that you really need to just get the system to where it should be operating today, let alone get ahead of the maintenance things that are going to happen over the next couple of years. It's really this fight between the FAA and Congress to say, We're going to do a lot today to fix these problems. And it works for a little while, but then three years down the road, the same problems are still occurring. You got that one-time shot of new money, but then the government cuts back again and again and again. And then you're just putting out one fire, but not addressing the root cause of why there's all this dry powder everywhere. People are canceling their flights into or out of Newark, but there are also all these smaller accidents we're seeing, most recently in San Diego, where six people were killed when a Cessna crashed. How should people be feeling about that? There's really no silver bullet and all the choices are not great to actively bad at baseline. Number one is you get the government to pay what it actually costs to run the air traffic control system. That empirically has not happened for decades, so I don't know that we're going to get to do it, especially under this administration, which is focused on cutting costs. The second thing is to pass on fees to fliers themselves. And it's just like the conversation that Walmart's having with tariffs — they don't want to do it. When they try to pass it on to the customer, President Trump yells at them, and it's just not a great situation. The third option is to reduce the number of flights in the sky. Part of this is that airlines are competing to have the most flights, the most convenient schedules, the most options. That's led to this logjam at places like Newark, where you really have these constraints on it. Right before all of this stuff happens, Newark was serving about 80 airplanes an hour, so 80 landings and takeoffs. Today, the FAA's actually started to admit restrictions on it, and now it's closer to 56 flights an hour, and that's probably the level that it can actually handle and not have these issues where you have planes in danger. But no airline wants to hear, Hey, you have to cut your flight schedule. We saw that with United: Their CEO was saying that the air traffic controllers who took trauma leave had 'walked off the job,' which seemed to suggest that he didn't think they should be taking trauma leave because you have to have more planes coming in. That's a competitive disadvantage for him, but you also have to balance safety. It's difficult to understand. It costs a lot of money to fix. This is your textbook 'why governments fail' case study and it's not really reassuring that in 24 hours I'm going to be in the middle of it again, trying to fly out of Newark.
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Air traffic controller who prevented mid air collision: ‘Avoid Newark'
Veteran air traffic controller Jonathan Stewart says he recently prevented a potential mid air collision near troubled Newark Liberty International Airport. He joins 'Elizabeth Vargas Reports' to talk about the stresses his colleagues face and the changes that are necessary to improve U.S. aviation. 'It's safe to fly,' Stewart says. But he adds: 'I would probably avoid Newark until something else is done.' #Newark #Aviation #FAA
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Air Traffic Controller Whose Split-Second Decision Narrowly Avoided Mid-Air Collision Speaks Out
A veteran air traffic controller is speaking out about the high-pressure working conditions he and his colleagues are facing amid tech blackouts and staffing shortages. Jonathan Stewart, 45, is a supervisor at Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON), which monitors flights traveling to and from Newark Liberty International Airport, as well as regional airports. In recent weeks, air controllers have been faced with unimaginable challenges, such as the 90-second outage at Newark that made their computer screens go dark while simultaneously leaving them without any direct line of communication to pilots. During an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Stewart got candid about how the traumatic experience has impacted him and his colleagues. He also detailed a close encounter between two planes flying near Newark, N.J., that called for him to make a split-second call to avoid a horrific accident. The incident involved a business jet flying out of Morristown Airport in New Jersey and another smaller plane that had taken off at nearby Teterboro, according to the outlet. Stewart quickly noticed the two aircrafts flying directly towards each other at the same altitude during the fourth hour of his shift. While he was able to quickly contact the two pilots and direct the two planes away from each other in time, he was 'badly shaken' by the near-collision as he feared their communication technology might give out like it did days before, per the outlet. Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. As a result of the incident and the current working conditions, Stewart opted to take a stress-related trauma leave after writing a strongly-worded email to FAA managers. In the email, he emphasized, 'I take my job very seriously, as I do the safety of the flying public, and take pride in my performance.' He notes that several of his colleagues have also taken leave after experiencing dangerous tech glitches, resulting in the same fear that these temporary outages could result in tragedy. 'I don't want to be responsible for killing 400 people,' Stewart said. Of his high-pressure job, he adds, 'It's like a videogame, but it's like playing 3-D chess at 250 miles an hour. We are the guys that are guiding your pilots home.' While he tells WSJ that he's set to earn a salary of over $450,000, he says it comes with 'a lot' of sacrifices, including demanding 60-hour work weeks. He adds that you're expected to 'give up nights, weekends, holidays, birthdays, everything else. Your mental health and your physical health take a toll.' He notes that every time there's any kind of incident, it has a 'cumulative' impact on every air controller. 'The thing about PTSD is this: For every time you have an incident — say a close call, a near-midair, God forbid — all of these things are cumulative,' he explained. He emphasizes that the lack of staffing is a major problem in air traffic control. Earlier this month, United Airlines cut 35 roundtrip flights from Newark due to 'FAA staffing issues,' the airline said. Not only does being understaffed lead to delays, but it can also lead to unsafe working conditions for the controllers working on the job. Stewart says in an ideal world, controllers shouldn't be actively monitoring traffic for more than two hours so they can stay sharp instead of possibly losing focus or getting fatigued. 'Like anything else, you're going to have a breaking point,' he added. In a May 13 statement from the FAA on the current staffing issues, the agency noted, 'There is a nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers, and the FAA for years has not met the staffing goal for the area that works Newark airspace.' The statement continued, 'If daily or per-shift staffing levels are low, the FAA ensures safety by implementing traffic management initiatives, such as slowing the flow of aircraft into an airport.' All of this comes on the heels of the deadly mid-air collision of an American Eagle passenger jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter over Washington D.C.'s Reagan National Airport that killed 67 people, and significant cuts made to the FAA by the Trump Administration. Read the original article on People
