PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Flights resumed at Philadelphia International Airport Monday afternoon after an air traffic equipment outage delayed and canceled hundreds of arrivals and departures.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it all began when a circuit blew at Philadelphia’s air traffic control facility. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the backup wasn’t available.
“When it went to flip into the backup, we discovered that the backup fiber had a break,” he said.
He said an Amtrak construction crew in New Jersey had severed the cable, leaving controllers without radar or communications during the day. Amtrak, however, pointed to a New Jersey Transit construction crew that was working in the area between Newark and New Brunswick. The result was hours of ground stops and departure delays from Philadelphia.
Flights into PHL, Newark Liberty International, Teterboro Airport, JFK and LaGuardia were paused Monday morning. Flights resumed hours later at PHL and LaGuardia, eventually followed by JFK, Teterboro and Newark.
Total delays within, into, or out of the United States at PHL topped more than 400 around 3 p.m., with 204 cancellations. By 6:15 p.m., delays were cut in half. By Tuesday morning, there were 30 cancellations and 20 delays.
One woman was trying to fly from Philadelphia to Chicago to get home to Alaska.
“A complete screw-up. It’s very bad the way it’s been handled,” she said. “My daughter had to go to the ticket station and was told it was canceled. And that was it. There was no help.”
Technicians repaired the failed data lines just before 7 p.m. However, significant delays continued throughout the night.
The FAA said the average arrival delay was more than three and a half hours.
The outage occurred just as President Donald Trump and numerous foreign leaders were flying into New York City for the U.N. General Assembly. Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney missed an event Monday on the sidelines of the General Assembly because of the flight disruptions but his office said he had arrived in New York by Monday night.
The technical problems stem from the same FAA facility in Philadelphia that caused numerous disruptions at the Newark airport last spring.
Regional control centers like these have two lines that carry radar and communications data in and out: the primary and the backup. The FAA said a circuit on the primary failed Monday morning, and when the system tried to switch to the backup, workers discovered that the fiber optic line had been cut.
The primary circuit that failed is due to be replaced as part of a massive overhaul of the nation’s air traffic control system.
Also Monday, the FAA began testing a new computer system that uses AI to help predict schedule conflicts and weather issues to help air traffic controllers reroute traffic. But that system is initially being tested only in the Washington, D.C., area, so it did not appear to be linked to the outages.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Flights resumed at PHL Monday after an hours-long ground stop
Flights resumed at PHL Monday after an hours-long ground stop
