Fiber cut by construction crew leads to ground stop and delays at several major airports
By Andi Babineau, Cindy Von Quednow, CNN
(CNN) — A Federal Aviation Administration equipment outage is causing significant flight delays at five major Northeast airports after construction contractors dug up and cut a Verizon cable, the company said in a statement to CNN.
The impacted airports are Newark Liberty International, Teterboro, Philadelphia International, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International.
“We have a fiber cable running adjacent to an Amtrak rail line in New Jersey. Construction contractors working in the area dug up and cut our cable,” the Verizon statement said, specifying the telecommunications company was not responsible for the damage.
“We and our partners are actively working to repair the damaged cable and restore connectivity as quickly as possible.”
The outage comes as hundreds of diplomats and world leaders are meeting at the United Nations New York headquarters for the General Assembly beginning Tuesday.
“This incident underscores the need for additional funding to modernize aging infrastructure and prevent disruptions like this in the future,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement on X.
The FAA has issued ground stops and delays at the airports “due to issues with Philadelphia TRACON,” the agency said in a statement.
Philadelphia TRACON is a facility that integrates radar approach control and air traffic control operations.
Arrivals have resumed at the Philadelphia Airport in a limited capacity, according to the FAA. Flights are also resuming at LaGuardia, Duffy said.
The FAA did not provide a timeline for when normal operations will resume.
This isn’t the first time TRACON experienced issues.
Last May, Philadelphia TRACON Area C experienced a roughly two-second radio outage, days after a separate outage prompted a ground stop for Newark-bound flights.
The issue came after the FAA insisted new upgrades to the facility, which moved from Long Island to Philadelphia the previous summer, would blunt new outages.
Last year’s outages raised concerns about how safe it is to fly at one of the nation’s busiest airports, but officials at the time said air travelers shouldn’t be concerned.
The Department of Transportation then introduced a new fiber optic cable between Philadelphia and New York to improve air traffic control telecommunications at the facility that handles flights in and out of Newark.
The-CNN-Wire
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