A construction mishap affecting air traffic control equipment in New Jersey on Monday caused chaos for travelers flying through the Northeast.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the equipment outage was caused after a construction crew “accidentally cut into a fiber line.” In an update shared around 6 p.m., Duffy said the lines had been fixed and that all impacted airport operations were resuming.
“It will take some time to clear all existing delays, so please check with your airline for the latest information,” Duffy said.
New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport was put under a ground stop at around 10 a.m., when a nearby air traffic control center experienced an equipment outage, forcing the Federal Aviation Administration to halt inbound flights.
The outage also affected Philadelphia and New York’s JFK and LaGuardia airports, with hundreds of flights delayed, diverted, or canceled. Newark has been hit hardest, with more than 500 departing and arriving flights canceled — nearly half of all scheduled operations — and over 200 delayed.
As of around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, things had returned somewhat to normal. Newark was still the worst affected, with 58 flights departing or arriving at the airport canceled, per FlightAware data. In Philadelphia, that number was 30.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told CBS News around 1 p.m. on Monday that the primary circuit, which was old and due for replacement, failed, and that about 600 feet of the backup fiber was accidentally cut out by a construction crew.
The affected ATC facility was the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control, or TRACON, which manages arriving and departing aircraft in the area.
New Jersey Transit
Duffy said earlier on Monday that an “Amtrak construction crew” cut the fiber line, causing the outage. Amtrak told Business Insider that the “incident occurred on New Jersey Transit property and involved a New Jersey Transit contractor,” not Amtrak.
New Jersey Transit confirmed to Business Insider that a construction crew working near the line “accidentally” cut the fiber-optic cable, but said they were working about 10 feet from the markings indicating the location of underground utilities.
“NJ TRANSIT staff is currently on site working to determine the status of the repairs, while also determining whether it was Verizon or the contractor who made the utility markings at the site,” a spokesperson said earlier on Monday. “Thirty-six out of the 56 fiber cables are done. They should be coming back online shortly. The rest should be done and tested shortly.”
Flightradar24 showed that several Newark-bound flights were diverted to destinations such as Pittsburgh and Detroit due to the ongoing outage. A United flight from Bogota to Newark diverted halfway through to Orlando. Flights from Europe on Lufthansa and Swiss were seen turning around over the Atlantic.
Flightradar24
Verizon told Reuters that it was their fiber cable, but that it was not their technicians who cut it. “We immediately deployed our technicians to the scene,” a spokesperson said. “We and our partners are actively working to repair the damaged cable and restore connectivity as quickly as possible.”
While the line has been repaired, it’s unclear how long the disruptions will last. It’s also unclear if airlines — who would not be considered at fault for the disruptions — will offer any accommodations or compensation for those stranded.
Flyers should continue to monitor their flight status, and those who booked with travel credit cards may have options for delays or trip reimbursement.
Aditi Bharade contributed reporting to this story.
