Communications lines at a major Philadelphia air traffic control facility were restored Monday evening, enabling airports across the U.S. Northeast to begin returning to normal after hours of widespread disruptions, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.
The outage led to hundreds of canceled flights, including more than 600 at Newark Liberty International Airport, and affected every major airport serving the New York City region. Duffy cautioned in an online post that clearing the backlog of delays would take time even after service was restored.
The Federal Aviation Administration facility in Philadelphia lost its main communications line earlier Monday. A backup fiber-optic line was then accidentally cut by workers involved in railroad construction, leaving air traffic controllers without radar and communications capabilities for several hours.
Newark experienced some of the most severe consequences. Commercial air traffic nearly stopped, with no commercial flights arriving at the airport from roughly 9:40 a.m. until shortly after 5:20 p.m. local time, according to flight-tracking service Flightradar24.
Philadelphia International Airport recorded more than 200 canceled arrivals and departures. LaGuardia and Kennedy airports in New York were also affected, though flights at all three airports had begun to resume by Monday evening.
Several airlines offered passengers the option to rebook at no additional cost. The FAA urged travelers to verify their flight status before leaving for the airport.
The disruption unfolded as President Donald Trump and a large number of foreign leaders traveled to New York for the United Nations General Assembly.
Cindy Phan said her morning flight from Newark to Minneapolis was delayed repeatedly before she learned at about 3 p.m. that it had been canceled and moved to Tuesday. The change forced her to arrange and pay for an additional hotel night.
“We could have had a whole day in New York,” Phan said. She added that she was eager to return home to her “two little Chihuahua babies.”
Shannon Franke and her husband were traveling from Nashville through Chicago when they learned that the final Southwest leg of their journey to Philadelphia had been canceled. The couple had visited Nashville to watch the Philadelphia Eagles defeat the Tennessee Titans 24-20 on a last-second touchdown Sunday.
Stranded in Chicago, the couple managed to secure a hotel room and chose to make the most of the unexpected stop with some deep-dish pizza, Franke said.
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“We’re just making the best of it,” Franke said. “If the Eagles would have lost … it would have been so much worse.”
The latest technical failure involved the same Philadelphia FAA facility that contributed to repeated disruptions at Newark Airport last spring.
Regional air traffic control centers rely on two connections to carry radar and communications data: a primary circuit and a backup line. The FAA said the primary circuit failed Monday morning, and the attempted switch to the backup revealed that its fiber-optic cable had also been severed.
Duffy initially attributed the damage to an Amtrak construction crew. Amtrak disputed that account and said a New Jersey Transit construction crew working between Newark and New Brunswick, New Jersey, was responsible.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the agency was prioritizing repairs to the primary connection, including installation of a new circuit, while crews worked simultaneously to restore the backup fiber line. Verizon also said its technicians were assisting with the restoration.
Bedford described the fiber-optic damage as “massive” and said repairs would take several hours, according to a video posted online by a CBS reporter.
The failed primary circuit is already scheduled for replacement as part of a major modernization of the nation’s air traffic control system.
The FAA also began testing a new artificial intelligence-assisted computer system Monday. The technology is designed to help identify scheduling conflicts and weather-related problems so controllers can reroute flights. Initial testing is limited to the Washington, D.C., area, however, and there was no indication that it played any role in the Northeast outage.
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AP reporters Rio Yamat and Jessica Hill contributed to this report from Las Vegas.
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