Airport has seen multiple serious failures in past weeks while Sean Duffy has assured the public it’s safe to fly from there

Sean Duffy, the Trump administration’s transportation secretary, has revealed that he switched flights for his wife this week to help her avoid flying out of beleaguered Newark Liberty, one of the busiest airports in the New York area.

Duffy’s disclosure on Monday followed his repeated assurances to the American public that it is safe to fly from Newark, despite a spate of dramatic outages affecting the airport’s radar systems that is causing ongoing disruption and delays. On Sunday, the transportation secretary went on NBC News’s Meet the Press and insisted Newark was safe.

“It is,” he protested. “I fly out of Newark all the time, my family flies out of Newark.”

Hours later, speaking to the conservative radio host David Webb on SiriusXM, he said: “My wife was flying out of Newark tomorrow, I switched her flight to LaGuardia”.