Flights disrupted due to technical problems at key air traffic center

[AP Photo]

Damaged communications lines at a key air traffic control facility in Philadelphia had been repaired, allowing airports across the U.S. Northeast to resume operations after hours of disruptions, the nation’s transportation secretary said Monday evening (yesterday, Macau time).

Hundreds of flights were canceled, including more than 600 into and out of Newark Liberty International Airport, as the outage hit every major airport in the New York City area. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also said in an online post that “it will take some time to clear all existing delays” despite the repairs.

The primary communications line at the Federal Aviation Administration facility in Philadelphia had failed earlier Monday, while the backup fiber optic line was inadvertently severed by railroad construction workers. The failures left controllers without radar or communications for hours.

The outage brought commercial air traffic to a near-standstill at Newark for much of the day, with no commercial flights landing at the airport from about 9:40 a.m. to just after 5:20 p.m. local time, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.

More than 200 flights into and out of Philadelphia International Airport were also canceled, while disruptions hit LaGuardia and Kennedy airports in New York. By Monday evening, flights were resuming at those airports.

Some airlines were allowing customers to change flights without charge. The FAA advised travelers to check the status of their flights before heading to the airport.

The outage occurred just as President Donald Trump and numerous foreign leaders were flying into New York City for the U.N. General Assembly. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney missed an event Monday on the sidelines of the General Assembly because of the flight disruptions but his office said he had arrived in New York by Monday night.

Cindy Phan said her morning flight from Newark to Minneapolis was repeatedly delayed before she learned around 3 p.m. that it had been canceled and rescheduled for Tuesday, requiring her to find and pay for another night at a hotel.

“We could have had a whole day in New York,” Phan said, adding that she wanted to get home to her “two little Chihuahua babies.”

Shannon Franke and her husband took a connecting flight from Nashville to Chicago when they found out their final Southwest leg home to Philadelphia was canceled. They had gone to Nashville to see the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Tennessee Titans 24-20 on a touchdown in the last seconds Sunday.

Stuck in Chicago, Franke said, they lucked out finding a hotel room and decided to enjoy some deep-dish pizza.

“We’re just making the best of it,” Franke said. “If the Eagles would have lost … it would have been so much worse.”

The technical problems stem from the same FAA facility in Philadelphia that caused numerous disruptions at the Newark airport last spring.

Regional control centers like these have two lines that carry radar and communications data in and out: the primary and the backup. The FAA said a circuit on the primary failed Monday morning, and when the system tried to switch to the backup, workers discovered that the fiber optic line had been cut.

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

FAA administrator Bryan Bedford told reporters earlier the agency had focused on fixing the primary connection as soon as possible by installing a new circuit on the primary line, while also working to repair the backup fiber optic line. Verizon said at the time that its technicians were also working to restore service.

Bedford earlier described the fiber break as “massive,” saying it would take several hours to repair, according to a video posted online by a CBS reporter.

The primary circuit that failed is due to be replaced as part of a massive overhaul of the nation’s air traffic control system.

Also Monday, the FAA began testing a new computer system that uses AI to help predict schedule conflicts and weather issues to help air traffic controllers reroute traffic. But that system is initially being tested only in the Washington, D.C., area, so it did not appear to be linked to the outages. JOSH FUNK, MDT/AP