United Airlines Flights Resume After Seven-Hour Delays Nationwide

A severed Verizon cable plunged the Northeast into travel chaos, forcing United Airlines to cancel every domestic flight to and from Newark Liberty International Airport after construction crews accidentally cut the line.

Ground stops were imposed at Newark Liberty International (EWR), Teterboro (TEB), Philadelphia International (PHL) and John F. Kennedy International (JFK), with delays stretching as long as seven hours.

Service began returning to normal after telecommunications crews repaired the damaged lines. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on X that “all airport operations in the Northeast are resuming.”

However, Duffy warned that it could take time to work through the backlog. “Please check with your airline for the latest information,” he wrote.

LaGuardia Airport (LGA) in New York, Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) and Philadelphia International Airport also reported ground delays as the disruption spread across the region.

Bryan Bedford, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, said the 600-foot fiber-optic cable was cut somewhere between New Brunswick and Newark, New Jersey.

“Somebody dug it up,” Bedford told reporters, according to video recorded by CBS News.

Duffy said an Amtrak construction crew accidentally severed the fiber-optic line, causing a telecommunications outage that rippled through the air-travel network.

“This incident underscores the need for additional funding to modernize aging infrastructure and prevent disruptions like this in the future,” Duffy said in a post on X.

The disruption came as 130 world leaders and dozens of government ministers arrived in New York for the annual high-level session of the United Nations General Assembly.

With airport equipment affected by the outage, the FAA directed flights bound for Newark to remain at their departure airports.

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The agency said ground delays across the Northeast were expected to continue until at least 9 p.m. Eastern time.

FAA alerts showed average delays ranging from 45 minutes to five hours. At the worst-hit airports Monday afternoon, delays approached seven hours.

The FAA also issued a ground stop for flights headed to JFK, holding aircraft at their departure airports until at least 6:30 p.m. Officials said there was a moderate chance the restriction could be extended.

Flights bound for New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport were likewise ordered to remain at their departure points across the United States and parts of Canada.

The outage highlighted the vulnerability of the aging U.S. air traffic control system, which Congress allocated $12.5 billion to modernize last year.

Bedford said a backup circuit had also failed, although traffic to JFK and LaGuardia was beginning to resume. He added that it remained unclear when operations would restart fully at Philadelphia and Newark.

A ground stop in Boston, which stopped accepting flights because of spillover volume, was lifted earlier in the day.

The FAA said it would 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 some frequencies ​at 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.

At Newark alone, more than 1,000 flights had been delayed or canceled. Throughout the US, there were nearly 6,000 delayed flights and 1,000 canceled.

‘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,’ Bedford said.

‘It’s massive, I’m told. ​Meanwhile, we’ve got the new circuit ​ready to install now.’ ⁠