The air traffic control supervisor is a huge pussy!

I'm sorry assface! Your $450,000 salary not enough for you? Think your collegues are understaffed so you take some paid leave to "de-stress" leaving your team even more understaffed. How about you go find a job somewhere else!

What a whiner...the two planes he spoke off missed each other? BFD. Besides they were both small business jets, where does he get off indicating he could have lost 400 people. It would have been 20-30 tops and those entitled assholes look down on all of us commercial fliers anyway. Good riddance.

I'm sure Voldemort will get this fixed pronto and fire Jonathan Stewart. OMG he's got the same name as the Daily Show Host. I bet he's gunning to get on network TV.

This Air-Traffic Controller Just Averted a Midair Collision. Now He’s Speaking Out.

Jonathan Stewart says controllers didn’t walk off the job after recent FAA equipment outages; ‘I don’t want to be responsible for killing 400 people’

In an exclusive interview with WSJ, one veteran air-traffic controller opens up about his own close call and the reasons for stress-related trauma leave. Photo: Hannah Yoon for WSJ

By Andrew Tangel, WSJ

May 15, 2025 4:00 pm ET

• FAA air-traffic controller opens up about stress, staffing and tech problems at facility overseeing airspace around Newark, N.J.

• Several controllers have taken stress-related leave after tech outages, creating potential disruptions for travelers.

• The FAA is pursuing various short- and long-term improvements for the Philadelphia facility that oversees Newark airspace.

MALVERN, Pa.—Jonathan Stewart was into his fourth hour overseeing the planes flying near Newark, N.J., when he noticed two aircraft speeding nose-to-nose on his radar scope.

A business jet that had departed the Morristown airport was heading toward another small plane that had taken off from nearby Teterboro, a hub for corporate flying. A midair collision was potentially seconds away with planes flying at the same altitude.

The veteran air-traffic controller had been scribbling callsigns for the planes and flight information in a notebook, worried that radar and radio communication might fail as they had days earlier. After recognizing the unfolding conflict, he instructed the pilots to turn the planes away from each other, which they did.

But Stewart, 45 years old, was badly shaken. Hours after the May 4 incident, he fired off an email to Federal Aviation Administration managers, criticizing their leadership. “I take my job very seriously, as I do the safety of the flying public, and take pride in my performance,” he wrote.

For years, the FAA has struggled to fully staff air-traffic facilities and keep critical technology running. Frustrated with the current work situation and his own close call, Stewart took stress-related trauma leave, a benefit available for controllers.

“I don’t want to be responsible for killing 400 people,” he said in an interview.

Controllers rarely speak to the media publicly, especially without the supervision of public-affairs officials. Stewart said he wanted to set the record straight about controllers who he said had been demonized in news coverage.

Jonathan Stewart, an FAA air traffic control specialist, sits for a portrait at Main Line Armory in Malvern, PA., on Monday May 12 2025.

Jonathan Stewart said the controllers who manage Newark airspace need more resources to effectively do their jobs.

Several controllers Stewart works with have also taken leave, some after tech glitches temporarily interrupted their radios, radar and backups—incidents they feared could have led to catastrophe.

Controller absences have stretched the FAA’s air-traffic operation. That has resulted in more frequent flight delays and deep disruptions at Newark Liberty International Airport, and spilled over to airports across the country.

The FAA said it was pursuing short- and long-term fixes for controllers who oversee Newark airspace. Those initiatives include installing a temporary backup telecommunication system, more-reliable connections and a new radar system based in Philadelphia.

The agency also said it was limiting flights to the airport and has a healthy training pipeline to boost staffing.

Stewart doesn’t work at an airport tower. He’s a supervisor at a facility known as a Tracon, or Terminal Radar Approach Control. In addition to handling traffic for smaller regional airports, the Philadelphia site oversees planes approaching Newark. In a dimly lighted room, he toggles between supervising other controllers and obsessively tracking the moving dots representing aircraft on radar scopes.

“It’s like a videogame, but it’s like playing 3-D chess at 250 miles an hour,” he said. “We are the guys that are guiding your pilots home.”

The air-traffic control workforce is largely unionized, and controllers like Stewart at busy FAA facilities are well paid. Stewart, who isn’t in the controllers’ union, said he is on track this year to earn over $450,000, including overtime. Highly skilled controllers deserve to make that much without grueling hours, he said.

“You’re sacrificing a lot for that,” Stewart said. There’s 60-hour workweeks, but also “you give up nights, weekends, holidays, birthdays, everything else. Your mental health and your physical health take a toll.”

Stewart said controllers aren’t to blame for all the recent delays and disruptions in and out of Newark. Controllers hadn’t “walked off the job,” as United Airlines Chief Executive Scott Kirby said in a recent letter to customers.

The comment was “insulting at best and just quite frankly misinformed,” Stewart said. Safety events, he said, might not be stressful initially. “But 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 said.

A United spokesman pointed to Kirby’s more recent statements calling for better equipment and working conditions for air-traffic controllers.

Stewart, who noted he wasn’t speaking on behalf of the FAA, said the controllers who manage Newark airspace are elite but need more resources to effectively do their jobs.

Adrenaline rush

Stewart spent part of Monday afternoon shooting his pistols at an indoor range in this Philadelphia suburb. In a lounge appointed with a fireplace and Chesterfield chairs, he enjoyed cigars and Johnnie Walker Blue Label scotch. He goes there for stress relief.

Hard-charging, confident and at times brash, Stewart said he also spends free time at the gym and riding his motorcycle.

A native of Pensacola, Fla., he got his start in air-traffic control while in the U.S. Air Force. He knew little then about the field.

The adrenaline rush hooked him, said Stewart, and the job’s high stakes. “It’s effing fun, man…You play God because you cannot fail,” he said. “You cannot make a mistake.”

Stewart spent about a decade in the Air Force. His service experience allowed him to bypass the typical civilian route of going through the FAA’s air-traffic controller training academy in Oklahoma City.

Over more than 25 years, Stewart has worked at several civilian and military air-traffic facilities, including those in Miami and in New York. Philadelphia was added to the list after the FAA last year moved oversight of Newark’s airspace from Long Island, N.Y. The agency’s move aimed to address years of chronic understaffing.

The staffing situation hasn’t yet improved. A string of tech outages prompted some controllers to take trauma leave, further imperiling staffing levels and making training harder.

Breaking point

Stewart sees staffing as among the biggest problems in air-traffic control. Thin ranks of controllers limit how many aircraft can be managed effectively, he said.

He prefers controllers spending no more than two hours actively working traffic. Otherwise, it’s easy to lose focus and get tired.

“Like anything else, you’re going to have a breaking point,” Stewart said.

In Stewart’s close call earlier this month, he worked more than three hours without a break, according to an internal safety report viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

“The situation is, has been and continues to be unsafe,” Stewart wrote in the report. He also said: “The amount of stress we are under is insurmountable.”

The FAA, which is reviewing the safety report, said it treats all such reports seriously and takes necessary action.

Stewart said he spoke with senior FAA officials ahead of an interview with the Journal. The agency, he said, seems to be taking steps to ease staffing and other problems facing controllers who oversee the Newark airspace.

“For the first time that I’m aware of, they are throwing money at the problem,” Stewart said.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has announced an effort to broadly overhaul the nation’s air-traffic system and asked Congress for billions of dollars to make it happen. Duffy has said the Philadelphia facility would be prioritized.

On Monday, Duffy said a software patch last weekend prevented a radar outage. FAA officials are also working to install a new radar system in Philadelphia, rather than use a glitchy data feed from Long Island.

Congested airspace and failure-prone tech aren’t the only challenges the Newark-area controllers face. Helping aircraft navigate through winds coming from the Adirondacks to the north and around the Hudson River creates unique challenges.

Getting from the classroom to working live traffic there can take a few years—“and that’s assuming that you can do it,” he said.

Stewart’s time away from work might be limited. His leave entitles him to up to 45 days of regular pay. A return to controller duties will depend on a medical evaluation.

Asked what else he’d like to say publicly, Stewart responded: “I would like to add that I’m tired and I want to go take a nap.”