Fiber optic outage in the United States disrupts air traffic in the Northeast

Air traffic was severely disrupted on Monday on the east coast of the United States after an outage affecting communications from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Several large airports, notably in the New York, Philadelphia and Boston regions, have had to temporarily suspend part of their operations.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy explained that “an Amtrak construction crew accidentally severed an optical fiber in New Jersey, causing a telecommunications outage” and leading the FAA to “suspend flights in the Northeast.” Flights resumed at LaGuardia and Philadelphia around 7:00 p.m. GMT, according to AFP, while Newark and JFK remained affected.

Canceled, delayed and diverted flights

The breakdown resulted from a succession of failures. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said that after a problem on the main line, crews found that the backup link was also unusable. “We discovered that the backup fiber was severed,” he said. He described the break as “massive” and estimated that it could take up to 13 hours to repair.

In Newark, 168 flights had been canceled and 97 delayed as of 1900 GMT, while Philadelphia had 63 cancellations and 189 delays, according to FlightAware data. Reuters reports that more than 5,600 flights were delayed or canceled across the United States and that more than a hundred had to be diverted to other airports.

United and American Airlines particularly affected

The disruptions particularly affected two important platforms for American companies: Newark, one of United Airlines' main hubs, and Philadelphia, an American Airlines hub, according to Reuters. Boston has also temporarily stopped accepting certain flights due to traffic postponement caused by restrictions imposed in the Northeast.

Our file on the United States