An NJ Transit contractor severed a Verizon fiber-optic cable in New Jersey on Monday. This caused major flight disruptions across the U.S. Northeast.
The severed cable was a backup line for a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) air traffic facility. The facility's primary circuit had already failed.
An outage occurred at the Philadelphia TRACON facility. This facility manages air traffic for several major airports. The FAA issued ground stops and delays.
Impacted airports included Newark, LaGuardia, JFK, Philadelphia, and Teterboro. The disruption resulted in over 7,000 delayed or canceled flights. Hundreds of flights were diverted, including international arrivals. Service restored after more than eight hours.