Equipment Outage Halts Flights at Newark and Philadelphia, Over 1,000 Cancelled
More than 1,000 flights were cancelled and over 6,000 delayed after communications failures at an FAA facility in Philadelphia halted operations at Newark and Philadelphia airports.
Air travel across the United States Northeast was thrown into disarray on Monday after equipment failures at a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facility in Philadelphia brought operations at two major airports to a standstill.
More than 1,000 flights were cancelled nationwide and over 6,000 delayed, with Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and Philadelphia International Airport in Pennsylvania bearing the brunt of the disruption.
How the outage unfolded
The trouble began when the primary communications circuit at the Philadelphia air traffic control facility failed on Monday morning. When the system attempted to switch to its backup, officials found that the backup fibre-optic line in New Jersey had been severed.
The twin failures left controllers without radar or communications for hours. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the agency focused on installing a new circuit on the primary line while also working to repair the backup connection. Telecom technicians were also pressed into service to restore the lines.
As a precaution, ground stops were extended to New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport while the repairs were carried out. That airspace has since reopened.
Commercial traffic at Newark came to a near-halt, with no commercial flights landing between about 9:40 am and just after 5:20 pm local time. More than 200 flights to and from Philadelphia were cancelled, and disruptions rippled through LaGuardia and Kennedy as well.
Blame traded over severed line
Earlier in the day, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed the cut fibre-optic line to an Amtrak construction crew. Amtrak, however, pointed to a New Jersey Transit crew working in the area between Newark and New Brunswick, New Jersey.
The Philadelphia facility has been the source of repeated disruptions at Newark in the past, and regional control centres of its kind rely on two lines — primary and backup — to carry radar and communications data.
Services resume
After officials acknowledged that the initial fix had not restored operations, Duffy said on Monday evening that the telecom lines had been repaired and that all airport operations in the Northeast were resuming. He cautioned that clearing the backlog of delays would take time and advised travellers to check with their airlines.
United Airlines, which operates a hub at Newark, said it would stop cancelling domestic flights at the airport for the rest of the day and issued a travel waiver to give passengers flexibility in rebooking. Several other carriers also allowed customers to change flights without charge.
The outage coincided with the arrival of US President Donald Trump and numerous foreign leaders in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly.