New York-Area Airports Resume Flights After Philadelphia FAA Communications Outage
Flights resumed at New York City-area airports Tuesday after damaged communications lines at a Philadelphia FAA facility caused widespread cancellations and delays.
Flights were taking off and landing at New York City-area airports on Tuesday, though delays and cancellations persisted a day after damaged communications lines at a key air traffic control facility in Philadelphia disrupted air travel across the US Northeast.
Hundreds of flights were canceled throughout the region on Monday, including more than 600 into and out of Newark Liberty International Airport, as the outage affected every major airport in the New York City area. Newark recorded about 40 delays and nearly 60 cancellations early Tuesday, according to the flight-tracking site FlightAware.
The trouble began when the primary communications line at the Federal Aviation Administration facility in Philadelphia failed on Monday morning. When the system attempted to switch to its backup fiber optic line, workers found that it had been severed. The failures left controllers without radar or communications for hours.
Commercial air traffic came to a near-standstill at Newark for much of Monday, with no commercial flights landing there from about 9:40 a.m. to just after 5:20 p.m. local time, according to the tracking site Flightradar24. More than 200 flights into and out of Philadelphia International Airport were also canceled, while disruptions hit LaGuardia and Kennedy airports in New York. Flights had resumed by Monday evening.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in an online post that "it will take some time to clear all existing delays" despite the repairs. The FAA advised travelers to check their flight status before heading to the airport, and some airlines allowed customers to change flights without charge.
The outage struck as President Donald Trump and numerous foreign leaders were arriving in New York City for the UN General Assembly. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney missed an event on the sidelines of the assembly on Monday because of the flight disruptions, though his office said he had reached New York by Monday night.
The technical problems stem from the same FAA facility in Philadelphia that caused numerous disruptions at Newark last spring. Regional control centers rely on two lines to carry radar and communications data: a primary and a backup. The FAA said a circuit on the primary failed Monday morning, and the backup fiber optic line was discovered to have been cut.
Earlier in the day, Duffy said an Amtrak construction crew was to blame. Amtrak, however, pointed to a New Jersey Transit construction crew working in the area between Newark and New Brunswick, New Jersey.