Denver International Airport has now become the latest airport to experience an outage in which it lost communication with pilots. 

Breitbart News reports that the outage, which took place on Monday, lasted for nearly 90 seconds.

Since that time, more details have come to light about the situation.

The bigger question in all of this is whether or not there actually has been an uptick in these outages, and, if so, what are the cause or causes?

The details:

The Denver Post reports that this outage was caused by "equipment failures."

Per the outlet:

Pilots flying near Denver International Airport lost communication with air traffic control for almost two minutes on Monday because of equipment failures . . . The Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center lost communication with pilots for about 90 seconds at 1:50 p.m. when transmitters that cover a segment of airspace went down, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement Thursday.

The Associated Press explains how the airport handled the situation.

It writes:

The FAA said in a statement that the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center lost communications for approximately 90 seconds. McIntosh said both the primary and main backup frequencies went down, so the controllers had to turn to an emergency frequency to communicate. “Controllers used another frequency to relay instructions to pilots. Aircraft remained safely separated and there were no impacts to operations,” the FAA said.

Thankfully, it would appear that the situation did not result in any damage, but it is still concerning.

Background

There does appear to be an uptick in such outages - or, at least, there have been more reports about such outages in the news.

Recently, for example, Breitbart News separately reported on the outage at the Newark Liberty International Airport.

It wrote:

The ongoing disruptions at Newark Airport have been attributed to a variety of factors, including radar outages, air traffic controller shortages, and other issues. According to the FAA, Newark has been experiencing an average of 34 arrival cancellations per day since mid-April, with delays increasing throughout the day from an average of five in the mornings to 16 by the evening. These delays typically last between 85 and 137 minutes on average.

This has prompted a response from the Trump administration.

The Associated Press reported:

Last week, the Trump administration announced a multibillion-dollar plan to overhaul an air traffic control system that relies on antiquated equipment. "Air travel is safe even if the air traffic control system is old, but the problems in Newark were unacceptable and could have been prevented if the system had been upgraded sooner," said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a Thursday op-ed in Newsweek.