Hundreds of flights disrupted on US East Coast
What's the story
A major telecommunications outage caused by a construction error led to the cancellation and delay of hundreds of flights on Monday. The incident affected airports on the US East Coast, including LaGuardia Airport in New York City and Philadelphia International Airport. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed that an Amtrak construction crew accidentally severed a fiber line in New Jersey, which triggered the outage.
Flight disruptions
Major disruptions at Newark and Philadelphia airports
Flight tracking service FlightAware reported that Newark Airport saw 168 flight cancelations and 97 delays.
Philadelphia International Airport also witnessed major disruptions with 63 canceled flights and 189 delays.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that the primary circuit at a key air traffic control facility in Philadelphia had failed, causing widespread flight interruptions across major airports in the region.
Technical failure
FAA reveals backup line also cut
In addition to the primary circuit failure, the FAA discovered that a backup fiber optic line had been cut between New Brunswick and Newark, New Jersey.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford described this rupture as "massive" due to the construction mistake.
He said that while they expect to restore the primary system by early afternoon, repairing the backup line would take about 13 hours.
Presidential travel
President Trump's flight departs amid chaos
Despite the widespread disruptions, President Donald Trump's flight from Washington DC to New York departed as scheduled.
The timing of the incident was particularly unfortunate, as it coincided with many foreign leaders arriving for the United Nations General Assembly, which started on September 18 and is slated to go on until September 28.