United training director says reacting to air traffic control issues in ‘pilots’ DNA’
United Airlines Capt. Miles Morgan will be flying into the Newark, N.J., airport in a few weeks on his way to Greenland. He has no qualms despite the recent brief outages at the air traffic control center handling the airport.
“I fully understand why people might be anxious. My friends and family call me with the same type of questions,” Morgan said.
Pilots, however, aren’t nervous, Morgan said. The 30-year United pilot and managing director of the airline’s Denver-based flight training center said a loss of communication with air traffic control is one of the first things pilots learn to handle.
“It’s something that’s embedded in our pilots’ DNA from a very, very early time,” Morgan said.
The nation’s air traffic control system and the Federal Aviation Administration are under scrutiny after a series of brief communication outages at Newark Liberty International Airport. The latest outage was Monday at the Philadelphia air traffic control center, which oversees flights at the New Jersey airport.
Pilots lost communication for about 90 seconds May 12 with the control center that handles Denver International Airport. Air traffic controllers used another frequency to talk to pilots, FAA officials said.
Messages were left with the FAA about an update to its investigation of the Denver-area incident.
While authorities and airlines haven’t reported any serious safety risks related to the outages, the incidents have spawned flight delays and cancellations. The outages have highlighted ongoing problems with aging and outdated equipment as well as staffing shortages.
Democratic members of Colorado’s congressional delegation asked Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau to immediately address the infrastructure and staffing problems at air traffic control centers. They said FAA employees let go as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s wide-scale federal staff reductions should be reinstated.
“While we are fortunate that our pilots safely managed this potentially catastrophic situation in Denver, this incident is part of an unacceptable pattern that many airports across the country are experiencing,” Colorado Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet and Reps. Joe Neguse and Diana DeGette wrote in a letter Tuesday.
The communication lapses are not as much of a safety issue as evidence of the need for systemwide improvements and modernization, said Chad Kendall, associate professor of aviation and aerospace science at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
“We have not come into the 21st Century and kept pace with technological improvements,” Kendall said. “These are government-run facilities, but the buck has been passed from one administration to another for many, many years.”
Kendall said both planes and air traffic control centers have redundant systems that serve as backups if a primary component fails. But he said the communication outage at the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center in Longmont, which handles traffic at DIA and surrounding states, was unusual because two ground transmitters went down simultaneously.
Kendall, a pilot for 30 years, said the good news is that pilots and air traffic controllers train throughout their careers for such contingencies. “There are thousands of professional air traffic controllers and pilots operating thousands of flights each day very safely.”
‘Layers of redundancy’
“Traffic!” “Traffic!”
The warning on board the Boeing 787 let Capt. Morgan know that a plane was uncomfortably close, about 600 feet above the plane he was piloting. The vertical buffer should be at least 1,000 feet.
Lucky for Morgan, Capt. Toby Lopez, serving as first officer, Capt. Brian Boeding and passengers, the close encounter was provided by one of the high-tech flight simulators at United’s Flight Training Center in northeast Denver.
“If this were real life, we would not be here,” Morgan said. “We would have gone down 500 feet and we would’ve gotten away from that.”
Morgan and Lopez could see the plane out the windshield and on the screen that’s part of the “traffic collision avoidance system.” Pilots can zoom out if they’re flying longer distances or zoom in the closer they get to an airport.
The “multiple layers of redundancy,” provide backups to backups, Morgan said. “If we should ever get down to where we have only one system remaining, we would land the plane in almost every situation.”
In the case of communication lapses like those experienced in Newark and Denver, pilots would switch to the last frequency the transmitter was on. They also monitor an emergency radio frequency that’s always in the background.
“Perhaps the most important part of this is that we have a fully independent system on the airplane where we can see the other air traffic around us,” Morgan said. “We know where they are, how far away, what direction they’re moving, whether they are above or below us and whether they’re climbing or descending.”
Morgan has put in at least 17,000 hours of flying over his career and has lost communication with air traffic control just once. However infrequent, dealing with the scenario is a basic part of flight training and United’s policies and procedures.
“Right from the very beginning,” Morgan said, “it’s something that we’re familiar with, something that we’re constantly thinking about.”
United trains all its roughly 18,000 pilots at the center in Denver. Newly hired pilots spend a couple of months at the 23-acre campus. Pilots who will fly a new kind of aircraft or move up to captain will be in training for a month. And all United pilots spend two to four days every nine months at the center.
The training center, which underwent a $145 million expansion in 2024, can handle about 600 pilots a day. About 1,600 of United’s 10,500 Denver-based employees work at the training center.
Transportation Secretary Duffy has proposed a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the country’s air traffic control system, including plans to upgrade the radio systems used to communicate with pilots and upgrade facilities.
“I’m excited about the leadership role the FAA is taking in this case,” Morgan said. “It will make us better, make us more efficient. From a safety perspective, I have no concerns because we’ve been operating this way successfully for a long time.”
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United Airlines Capt. Miles Morgan will be flying into the Newark, N.J., airport in a few weeks on his way to Greenland. He has no qualms despite the recent brief outages at the air traffic control center handling the airport. “I fully understand why people might be anxious. My friends and family call me with…