Flights were taking off and landing at New York City-area airports Tuesday with some delays and cancellations, after hours of disruptions resulting from damaged communications lines at a key air traffic control facility in Philadelphia that were later repaired.
Hundreds of flights were canceled throughout the U.S. Northeast on Monday, 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 Newark airport showed about 40 delays and nearly 60 cancellations early Tuesday, according to Flightaware.com, a global flight tracking and aviation data site.
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. Flights had resumed by Monday evening.
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 technical problems stem from the same FAA facility in Philadelphia that caused numerous disruptions at the Newark airport last spring.
New York Airport Operations Resume After Disruptions Across US Northeast Due To Technical Problems
