A major FAA telecommunications failure disrupted air traffic across the US Northeast on Monday after a primary circuit failed and a backup fibre line was found cut during construction in New Jersey. More than 5,600 flights were affected, including services at Newark, Philadelphia, JFK and LaGuardia, with some flights delayed, cancelled, diverted or briefly held on the ground. Lufthansa flight LH400 diverted to Boston before later continuing towards New York.
The FAA traced the outage to a failed primary circuit in Philadelphia, then to the severed backup line after the system switched over. Verizon identified the damaged cable as its own fibre, while US officials linked the cut to construction work near an Amtrak rail line in New Jersey. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford put repair work on the backup fibre at about 13 hours, as operations resumed gradually through the day. Around 90 flights were diverted and roughly 1,200 were disrupted in the New York area alone.