By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, Sept 21 (Reuters) – A failed telecommunications circuit and a severed fiber-optic cable snarled thousands of flights across the US on Monday and forced a halt to incoming flights at major airports in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.
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.
The Federal Aviation Administration halted incoming traffic on Monday at busy US East Coast airports and at one point stopped incoming flights at all three major New York-area airports as well as Philadelphia and Boston and two smaller airports in the New York area.
FlightAware, a flight-tracking website, said more than 5,600 US flights were delayed or canceled, including 1,200 flights at the three New York-area airports.
The issue also forced the diversion of more than 100 flights to other airports.
The incident demonstrated the fragility of the aging U.S. air traffic control system, which Congress awarded $12.5 billion for upgrades last year.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said 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.
He said flights were resuming at New York LaGuardia but remained paused at Newark and New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport.
All arriving flights were again halted in Philadelphia after a ground stop was briefly lifted. Reagan Washington National Airport also halted flights for more than an hour because of volume issues.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said a replacement circuit had failed at Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control, which was the primary communications for the center. A ground stop at Boston, which stopped accepting flights because of spillover volume, was also lifted.
The FAA will not restart the system for incoming flights at the affected airports “until we make sure the airspace is safe,” Bedford said.
The loss of communications was tied to a failed circuit a Philadelphia air traffic control facility that handles air traffic for the airports, Bedford said. Then authorities discovered that a backup fiber line was accidentally cut by a construction crew in New Jersey.
“When it went to flip into the backup, we discovered that the backup fiber had a break, and that fiber break is probably 13 hours to repair. It’s massive, I’m told. Meanwhile, we’ve got the new circuit ready to install now,” Bedford said.
Newark is a major United Airlines hub, while Philadelphia is an American Airlines hub.
Verizon said its fiber cable running adjacent to an Amtrak rail line in New Jersey was cut and its facilities were fully functional up to that point. The company said it was working to repair the damaged cable and restore connectivity as quickly as possible.
In May 2025, the Philadelphia facility that guides air traffic in and out of Newark airport suffered a series of significant communications outages.
The FAA said last year a telecommunications outage impacted communications and radar displays at Philadelphia TRACON.
Last year, Congress approved $12.5 billion to address the aging air traffic control system, and boost controller hiring following decades of complaints over airport congestion and flight delays and a series of technology issues in recent years.
Duffy said Congress needed to approve another $17.5 billion to finish the job. “This is unacceptable in America,” Duffy said.
(Reporting by David Shepardson, Editing by Franklin Paul, Aurora Ellis and David Gregorio)
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