Washington (Rajeev Sharma): Air travel across parts of the northeastern United States was thrown into disarray on Monday after a telecommunications failure disrupted air traffic control operations, leading to hundreds of flight cancellations and delays at several major airports.
US officials said the outage was caused when an Amtrak construction crew accidentally damaged a fibre-optic line in New Jersey. The resulting communications failure forced the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to temporarily restrict flights at some of the busiest airports serving the New York and Philadelphia regions.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said flights were beginning to resume at LaGuardia Airport and Philadelphia by around 1900 GMT. Operations at Newark Liberty International Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport, however, remained paused at that time.
Backup system also affected
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the disruption involved problems with both the primary and backup telecommunications systems.
After officials detected an outage affecting the main communications line, they discovered that the backup fibre connection had also been damaged. Bedford described the damage to the secondary line as extensive.
He said authorities expected the primary system to be restored during the afternoon, while repairs to the backup connection could take approximately 13 hours.
The loss of communications capacity prompted the FAA to limit flight operations in the affected region as a safety measure.
Major airports record widespread disruption
The impact was quickly reflected in flight schedules across the region.
By around 1900 GMT, Newark Airport had recorded 168 cancellations and 97 delays, while Philadelphia International Airport had 63 cancellations and 189 delays, according to flight-tracking data.
The disruption affected passengers travelling through the New York metropolitan area and other airports across the Northeast, with delays expected to continue as airlines worked to reorganize schedules.
Officials said the incident was linked to construction work rather than a problem with aircraft or airport security systems.
As crews worked to restore both communications routes, aviation authorities continued monitoring the situation and gradually resumed flights where air traffic control capacity allowed.
