Flights at New York’s major airports were disrupted after a technical problem at an air traffic control facility in Philadelphia, snarling travel and delaying the arrival of visitors for the United Nations General Assembly.
(Bloomberg) — Flights at New York’s major airports were disrupted after a technical problem at an air traffic control facility in Philadelphia, snarling travel and delaying the arrival of visitors for the United Nations General Assembly.
A so-called ground stop is in effect at Newark Liberty International and New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport, which handles private jets, according to the Federal Aviation Administration’s National Airspace System Status website.
The FAA lifted earlier ground stops for LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy International and Philadelphia International Airport. The Newark order remains in effect until 4:45 p.m., as of 3 p.m.
About 209 flights, or 37% of Newark’s scheduled departures, were canceled, according to tracker FlightAware. About the same number of scheduled arrivals were also canceled, as of 3:26 p.m.
Philadelphia had average departure delays of more than three hours, while Teterboro had delays of more than five hours as of 3 p.m. local time on Monday. The outage comes as New York hosts the United Nations General Assembly this week that will see leaders from around the world converging on the city.
“The timing is absolutely horrible,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told reporters during an event in Washington. “I’m very sorry for the delays and cancellations that the traveling public is experiencing, but their safety is the most important thing.”
The outage occurred due to the primary circuit failing at a Philadelphia facility that guides flights into and out of the Newark and Philadelphia airports, Bedford said. The backup fiber optic cable had a cut that will take about 13 hours to repair, Bedford said.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post to social media that an Amtrak construction crew accidentally cut the fiber line.
Verizon Communications Inc. has a fiber cable running adjacent to the Amtrak rail line in New Jersey. “Construction contractors working in the area dug up and cut our cable,” Richard Young, a spokesman for Verizon said in an email. The company bears no responsibility for the incident, the Verizon spokesman added.
An attempt by the FAA to replace the failed circuit didn’t work, Bedford said earlier Monday. The agency had to shut down multiple airports in the Northeast for that repair effort but has since started bringing some back online.
United Airlines Holdings Inc., which has one of its biggest hubs at Newark, advised affected customers that they could rebook their trips for free until Sept. 23.
The Philadelphia facility is the same site that had major technology breakdowns in 2025 that caused multiple disruptions. Duffy pointed to the issues in his push for a large-scale modernization of air traffic control equipment in the US.
Both Duffy and Bedford said on Monday that the recent circuit failure again underscores the importance of modernization.
“It’s crazy to see how we’re having to chase these 50-year-old, obsolete circuit problems,” Bedford said.
Technical issues can quickly have extensive knock-on effects for flights. In the UK on Monday, a brief glitch knocked out operations at a crucial center in Scotland, leading to delays. The issue came two weeks after a massive countrywide disruption in UK airspace.
–With assistance from Myles Miller.
(Updates throughout with comments from officials and details on ground stops.)
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