FAA Halts East Coast Flights After Fiber Cable Cut in New Jersey

US aviation authorities stopped incoming flights at major East Coast airports for hours on Monday, September 21, after a fiber-optic cable was cut at a construction site in New Jersey and severed a communications link used by the Federal Aviation Administration.

How the outage unfolded

The disruption began around 9:45 a.m., when workers accidentally cut a telecom line used by the FAA. The agency halted arrivals at all three major New York-area airports — Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty — as well as Philadelphia, Boston and two smaller airports in the region. The problems were not fully resolved for eight hours.

The primary communications circuit at the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control center, which guides aircraft in and out of those airports, failed first; the backup fiber, officials found, had already been cut. “That fiber break is probably 13 hours to repair. It’s massive, I’m told,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said, adding that a new circuit was ready to install. A Boston ground stop caused by spillover volume was lifted, but the agency would not restart arrivals “until we make sure the airspace is safe.”

Blame disputed, lines repaired

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy initially blamed an Amtrak construction crew for cutting the fiber near New Brunswick; Amtrak denied it, saying the incident occurred on New Jersey Transit property and involved an NJ Transit contractor. NJ Transit said a crew on the Delco Lead project severed the cable at about 9:45 a.m. while digging roughly 10 feet (3 metres) from utility markings, and was still checking whether Verizon or the contractor had placed them. Verizon, which owns the cable, said it was repairing the line near the Amtrak railway. By 5:30 p.m. NJ Transit said most fibers were fixed; Duffy posted that telecom lines had been repaired and normal operations were resuming, warning that clearing the backlog would take time.

Thousands of flights snarled

FlightAware counted about 7,000 delayed or canceled flights across the US, including 1,400 at the three New York-area airports, and more than 100 diversions. More than half of flights were canceled at Newark, a United Airlines hub, and the carrier issued a travel waiver; Philadelphia is an American Airlines hub. Earlier in the day Flightradar24 put average delays at Newark at 112 minutes. Newark reopened to arrivals after eight hours, LaGuardia and Philadelphia also resumed, and Reagan Washington National halted flights for over an hour because of volume.

Why it matters

The incident exposed the fragility of the ageing US air traffic control system, which Congress awarded $12.5 billion to upgrade last year, and it landed on the day about 130 world leaders and dozens of ministers were arriving in New York for the UN General Assembly’s high-level meeting. “The timing is absolutely horrible,” Bedford told reporters. The Philadelphia facility had suffered significant communications outages in May 2025 as well.