It was less than two hours before United Airlines Flight 110 was scheduled to depart for London from Newark when Nikki Brooks got word that something was wrong.
A team delivering blankets and pillows for the overnight long-haul flight reported damage on a rear plane door around 4 p.m. on Thursday. A photograph showed what appeared to be a scratch that maintenance needed to inspect. So Ms. Brooks, a manager at the airline’s Station Operations Center at Newark Liberty International Airport, delayed the flight.
From a fifth-floor perch with views of Terminal C and the runways, Ms. Brooks and her colleagues make hundreds of decisions a day, about mechanical and medical issues or gate assignments — all to keep United’s operations smooth and ensure planes aren’t delayed.
If they do their jobs right, no one hears about the more than 600 flights a day that United operates at Newark, one of its hubs. Lately, keeping those planes on time has been harder to do.
A series of air traffic control technology outages and staffing shortages, along with runway construction, has created a sense of crisis at Newark among travelers. Delays and safety concerns early in the month drove away some fliers and prompted federal officials to fast-track desperately needed improvements. Now, to stem the disruption, the Federal Aviation Administration has limited the number of flights at Newark through most of the rest of the year.
On Thursday, Ms. Brooks and her colleagues were overseeing an early wave of Memorial Day travel, which kicks off the busy summer season nationwide.