Travel meltdown caused by aging circuit and backup system failure, transportation officials say

By Andi Babineau, Cindy Von Quednow, CNN

(CNN) — At least five major Northeast airports experienced ground stops and massive delays Monday after both an aging circuit and its backup system failed, transportation officials said.

The travel meltdown came as world leaders gathered in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, delaying Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s arrival in New York City, where he will miss a previously scheduled summit, his office told CNN.

The flight problems also come as the transportation secretary continues to call for modernizing the nation’s aging air traffic control infrastructure.

The impacted airports include Newark Liberty International, Teterboro, Philadelphia International, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International, all handled by the Philadelphia TRACON facility, which integrates radar approach control and air traffic control operations.

Newark saw more cancellations Monday than any other airport in the world, according to data from flight tracking site FlightAware.com. More than 300 flights have been canceled as of Monday evening, accounting for over half of the airport’s scheduled departures.

“We have a fiber cable running adjacent to an Amtrak rail line in New Jersey. Construction contractors working in the area dug up and cut our cable,” Verizon said in a statement to CNN, specifying the telecommunications company was not responsible for the damage.

“We and our partners are actively working to repair the damaged cable and restore connectivity as quickly as possible.”

CNN has reached out to Amtrak for comment.

The outage comes as hundreds of diplomats and world leaders are meeting at the United Nations New York headquarters for the General Assembly beginning Tuesday.

Improving infrastructure has been one of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s primary focuses since taking the helm. Last year he announced plans to build a “brand new air traffic control system,” and amid Monday’s issues, he announced an AI tool he says will help ease the burden on air traffic controllers.

“This incident underscores the need for additional funding to modernize aging infrastructure and prevent disruptions like this in the future,” Duffy said in a statement on X.

An aging circuit slated for replacement failed Monday, and officials discovered a break in the backup fiber when the system switched to backup mode, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told CNN affiliate WUSA. A new circuit was expected to be installed Monday afternoon, and flights would resume when safe, though repairs could take up to 13 hours, Bedford and Duffy said.

“This is why we’re asking for budget to replace all of this stuff… We’re pulling copper up and putting fiber down, but it’s the same data architecture that we’ve had for 50 years,” Bedford said. “The FAA wants to replace that architecture with a new modern federal enterprise network system, and we need budget for that.”

“These are issues that aren’t new to us,” Duffy added. “This is not shocking. This is not a new problem. It’s an old system that we were stuck working with.”

The FAA did not provide a timeline for when normal operations will resume.

In audio from ATC.com obtained by CNN, air traffic controllers and pilots can be heard discussing the outage.

“Yeah, man, nothing works,” an air traffic controller at the Philadelphia International Airport tells a pilot. “People are getting out, but it’s slow going.”

Controllers are then heard trying to direct traffic among the stalled planes, the audio shows.

This isn’t the first time TRACON experienced issues.

Last May, Philadelphia TRACON Area C experienced a roughly two-second radio outage, days after a separate outage prompted a ground stop for Newark-bound flights.

The issue came after the FAA insisted new upgrades to the facility, which moved from Long Island to Philadelphia the previous summer, would blunt new outages.

Last year’s outages raised concerns about how safe it is to fly at one of the nation’s busiest airports, but officials at the time said air travelers shouldn’t be concerned.

The Department of Transportation then introduced a new fiber optic cable between Philadelphia and New York to improve air traffic control telecommunications at the facility that handles flights in and out of Newark.

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CNN’s Nic Anderson, Taso Stefanidis and Paula Newton contributed to this report.