Telecom outage disrupts thousands of US flights

Thousands of flights across the US were disrupted on Monday, with incoming flights halted for hours at major East Coast airports before the Federal Aviation Administration resolved a telecommunications problem late in the afternoon.\

The issue began around 9:45am when workers accidentally cut a telecommunications line in New Jersey used by the FAA. The incident forced a halt to incoming flights at major airports on a day when 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 FAA stopped arrivals at all three major New York-area airports, as well as Philadelphia and Boston and two smaller airports in the New York area. The problems were not fully resolved for eight hours.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on X late in the afternoon that the telecommunications lines had been repaired and normal operations throughout the Northeast were resuming. He said it would take time to clear existing delays and urged passengers to check the status of the flights they were waiting for.

FlightAware, a flight-tracking website, said about 7,000 flights were delayed or cancelled, including 1,400 flights at the three major New York-area airports.

The incident highlighted the fragility of the aging US air traffic control system, which Congress awarded $12.5 billion for upgrades last year.

New Jersey Transit said a crew had been digging at one of its work sites 10 feet away from the utility markings and that it was still trying to determine whether Verizon or the contractor had made the markings. Duffy initially blamed an Amtrak construction crew, saying it had accidentally cut into a fibre line in New Jersey near New Brunswick, causing a telecommunications outage and forcing the FAA to pause flights in the Northeast.

Around 5:30pm, New Jersey Transit said most of the fibre cables had been repaired and should be coming back online shortly. Newark Airport reopened for arriving flights after eight hours, while LaGuardia also reopened after being closed to flights for much of the afternoon.

Verizon said it was working to repair the damaged cable near the Amtrak rail line and restore connectivity as quickly as possible.