Severed fiber line grounds flights as world leaders descend on New York for UN meeting

Major airports across the Northeast ground to a halt on Monday after construction workers accidentally cut a critical cable. Flights at major New York and New Jersey airports, as well as Philadelphia and Boston and two smaller airports in the ​New York area, were halted, a development that occurred the same day over 100 global leaders were traveling to New York City for the U.N.’s annual assembly. The General Assembly is taking place Tuesday through Thursday and will be attended by around 130 world leaders and senior representatives, including President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and French President Emmanuel Macron. Recommended Stories Thousands of lights nationwide were affected due to the debacle, caused by a failed telecom circuit and a backup fiber cable that was subsequently accidentally cut. Newark Liberty International Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport, Teterboro Airport, Philadelphia International Airport, and LaGuardia Airport are among the sites directly affected. As of around 3 p.m. Monday, officials said flights are resuming in LaGuardia and Philadelphia, while Newark, JFK, and Teterboro remain paused. Federal Aviation Administration Chief Bryan Bedford said the initial outage occurred at Philadelphia’s Terminal Radar Approach Control facility, which handles air traffic for the airports. TRACON’s primary circuit, which was aging, failed on Monday. When officials tried to switch to a backup fiber-optic cable, the cable was mistakenly cut by a construction crew in New Jersey. In an update on the system failures Monday afternoon, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that an Amtrak construction crew accidentally cut into the backup fiber line, forcing the FAA to pause flights in the Northeast. FAA BEGINS ROLLOUT OF NEW AI AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER SYSTEM IN DCHe said the incident “underscores the need for additional funding to modernize aging infrastructure and prevent disruptions like this in the future.” The fiber cable runs adjacent to an Amtrak rail line, and Amtrak construction contractors cut into it, according to Verizon. Bedford said that since fiber cable would take about 13 hours to repair, authorities are instead working to replace the circuit.