More than 1,000 flights were canceled due to air travel disruptions across the US Northeast; service recovery: What caused the outage? | Today’s news

Flyers across the United States faced massive disruptions to their travel plans Monday after equipment outages halted flights at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and Philadelphia International Airport in Pennsylvania.

More than 1,000 flights were canceled nationwide and more than 6,000 were delayed Monday, with Newark and Philadelphia hardest hit, ABC News reported.

What caused the disruption?

According to the Associated Press, a primary communications line failed earlier Monday at a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facility in Philadelphia while a backup fiber optic line was inadvertently cut by railroad construction workers.

The malfunctions left controllers without radar or communications for hours.

“The problems started when a circuit blew Monday morning in Philadelphia,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said. He added: “When the backup system was put in place, officials discovered that the backup line in New Jersey had been cut.”

To change the circuit in Philadelphia, Bedford was quoted by ABC News as saying that airspace in the Northeast would be temporarily closed.

Ground stops were expanded to include New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport as part of the work, although the airspace at those locations has since reopened.

The outage brought commercial air traffic to a near standstill at Newark, with no commercial flights landing at the airport from approximately 9:40 a.m. to 5:20 p.m. local time, according to flight tracking website Flightradar24.

More than 200 flights to and from Philadelphia International Airport were also canceled, while disruptions hit New York’s LaGuardia and Kennedy airports, according to the report. Flights at these airports resumed on Monday evening.

Some airlines allowed customers to change flights free of charge. The FAA advised travelers to check the status of their flights before traveling to the airport.

The outage occurred just as President Donald Trump and numerous foreign leaders were flying to New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

What else do we know?

The technical problems stem from the same FAA facility in Philadelphia that caused multiple disruptions at Newark Airport last spring, the AP reported.

Regional control centers like these have two lines that carry radar and communications data in and out: a primary and a backup.

The FAA said a circuit failed on the primary circuit Monday morning, and when the system tried to switch to the backup, workers discovered the fiber optic line had been cut.

Earlier in the day, Duffy said Amtrak’s construction crew was to blame. However, Amtrak pointed to a New Jersey Transit construction crew working in the area between Newark and New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Earlier, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told reporters that the agency focused on repairing the primary connection as quickly as possible by installing a new circuit on the primary line while working to repair the backup fiber optic line.

Verizon said at the time that its technicians were also working to restore service.

The outage caused a ripple effect across the Northeast and the US, with some flights diverted and others canceled and delayed.

Repair completed, flights resumed

Hours after officials said a patch to replace the circuit in Philadelphia had not worked and traffic was still grounded at Philadelphia and Newark airports, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Monday night that telecommunications lines had been repaired and “all airport operations in the Northeast are being restored,” according to ABC News.

“It will take some time to clear all existing delays, so please check with your airline for the latest information,” he said on X.

United Airlines, which has one of its hubs at Newark Airport, said Monday evening that it was no longer canceling domestic flights at the airport for the rest of the day.

“We know this outage is a significant disruption for our customers,” United said in a statement. “Once this is resolved, we will work to get them to their destinations safely and have issued a waiver to give them flexibility to manage their travel plans.”