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US Flights Grounded After Construction Crew Cuts Cable
Confirmed
In Short: On Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halted flights at major airports including New York's John F. Kennedy International, LaGuardia, Newark Liberty International, and Philadelphia International, after a fiber-optic cable was cut by construction workers.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on social media platform X that flights had resumed at LaGuardia and Philadelphia, but ground stops remained in effect at Newark, JFK, and Teterboro Airport.
An Amtrak construction crew accidentally cut into a fiber line in New Jersey, causing a telecom outage and forcing the FAA to pause flights in the Northeast.
At Newark alone, more than 1,000 flights were delayed or cancelled, with nearly 4,000 delayed flights and 500 cancelled across the US.
Telecommunications company Verizon, which owns the cable, said it was working to repair it as quickly as possible and that it bore no responsibility for the incident.
The severed cable was a backup network, and the error was only discovered after the primary circuit failed.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said Philadelphia TRACON lost its primary circuit, and when controllers switched to a backup system, they discovered a broken fiber-optic cable.
Hours later, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the cable had been repaired and airports would resume normal operations, though delays were still expected.
New Jersey public transportation agency NJ Transit told CBS News that its construction workers had accidentally severed the line and that markers had been wrongly placed at the digging site.
What's confirmed
- The flights were halted on the day that 130 world leaders and dozens of ministers were arriving in New York for the annual high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.
- “An Amtrak construction crew accidentally cut into a fiber line in New Jersey which caused a telecom outage and forced FAA to pause flights in the Northeast,” Duffy said in a post on X.
- “Flights that had been destined for Newark have either been held at their departure airport or diverted to alternative airports. Once the FAA outage is resolved, we will work to safely get our customers to their destinations and have issued a travel waiver to give our customers flexibility to manage their travel plans,” a representative for United Airlines said in a statement provided to Al Jazeera.
- Duffy said flights were resuming at LaGuardia Airport (LGA) and Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), while flights into Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), John F.
- “We have a fiber cable running adjacent to an Amtrak rail line in New Jersey. Construction contractors working in the area dug up and cut our cable. Verizon’s facilities were fully functional up to that point. Verizon bears no responsibility for this incident,” a spokesperson for the telecom firm said in a statement.
What's still developing
- On Monday, the FAA issued ground stops at large commercial airports, including New York’s John F Kennedy International (JFK) and LaGuardia; Newark Liberty International in New Jersey, as well as Boston Logan and Philadelphia International Airport.
- FAA halts East Coast flights due to equipment outage, affecting major US airports in New York, Newark, and Philadelphia.
- The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has halted flights to several busy East Coast airports amid an equipment outage, snarling more than 1,000 flights.
- It reported that 267 departing flights were delayed today, while a further 257 flights destined for Newark were also delayed.
- The major east coast disruption comes ahead of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York City on Tuesday, which is expected to be attended by scores of world leaders arriving into New York-area airports.
- The transportation secretary spoke to FOX Business' Connor Hansen about what caused the Northeast airport disruptions and why he says similar outages could continue without major infrastructure upgrades.
- Air traffic into New York City’s major airports suffered heavy delays Monday after crews working on the Northeast Corridor rail line severed a fiber optic cable linking two major air traffic control centers, the Daily News has learned.
- The severed cable appeared to have knocked out all communications between New York’s metro area air traffic control and its counterpart in Philadelphia, which controls much of northern New Jersey’s air space.
- All flights into and out of the region were grounded for a time.
- As previously reported by the News, flights taking off and landing at Newark and Teterboro are handled by the air traffic controllers at Philadelphia’s “terminal radar approach control” — or TRACON — who are responsible for the skies over North Jersey.
- The radar information they use to guide those flights, however, is routed through New York TRACON — which handles takeoff and landing control for LaGuardia and Kennedy.
- The FAA told Newsweek that the technology failure, involving a fiberoptic cable, was affecting flights across the Northeast United States.
Sources
- ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporationlink
- Al Jazeeralink
- BBClink
- Daily Sabahlink
- Fox Businesslink
- New York Daily Newslink
- News4JAXlink
- Newsweeklink
- San Francisco Chroniclelink
- The Guardianlink
- WQOWlink
- economictimes.comlink
- inkllink
- Burunditimeslink
- Fox Newslink
- Whichlink
- Forbes Breaking News — video link