Telecom outage delays and diverts thousands of US flights

New York, United States. A telecommunications outage caused by a severed fiber-optic cable and a failed replacement circuit disrupted thousands of flights across the United States on Monday, prompting authorities to halt incoming traffic at major East Coast airports.

The disruption occurred as 130 world leaders and dozens of ministers were arriving in New York for the annual high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.

Airport disruptions

The Federal Aviation Administration halted incoming flights at major airports in New York, Boston and Philadelphia. At one point, arrivals were stopped at all three major New York-area airports, as well as Philadelphia, Boston and two smaller airports in the New York area.

Flight-tracking website FlightAware reported that more than 5,600 US flights were delayed or cancelled, including 1,200 flights at the three New York-area airports. More than 100 flights were diverted to other airports.

Flights resumed at New York LaGuardia Airport, while arrivals remained paused at Newark and New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.

Philadelphia again halted all arriving flights after a ground stop was briefly lifted. Reagan Washington National Airport also stopped incoming flights for more than an hour because of volume issues. A ground stop at Boston, imposed because of spillover volume, was later lifted.

Cause of outage

Duffy said an Amtrak construction crew in New Jersey accidentally cut a fiber line, causing a telecommunications outage that led the FAA to pause flights in the Northeast.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said a replacement circuit failed at Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control, the primary communications system for the centre.

The incident highlighted the vulnerability of the ageing US air traffic control system, for which Congress allocated $12.5 billion in upgrades last year.