Severed Fiber Cable Grounds Flights at Five Northeast Airports

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered ground stops at Newark Liberty, Philadelphia International, LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy, and Teterboro airports on Monday, September 21, 2026. The disruption began when a primary communications circuit failed at the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility. Attempts to switch to backup systems failed because a 600-foot section of fiber-optic cable between New Brunswick and Newark, New Jersey, had been severed by a construction crew.

The outage caused massive regional delays and over 900 cancellations nationwide, with Newark Liberty hardest hit. The crisis coincided with the arrival of President Donald Trump and approximately 130 world leaders for the United Nations General Assembly, causing some officials, including Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, to miss scheduled events. United Airlines canceled all remaining domestic flights to and from Newark to prioritize international departures.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford noted that the agency did not discover the fiber break until after the primary circuit failed. While a replacement circuit restored some operations by Monday evening, full repairs to the backup line took approximately 13 hours. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed the damage to an Amtrak crew, though Amtrak later claimed a New Jersey Transit crew was responsible. Duffy used the incident to call for tens of billions of dollars in funding to modernize aging infrastructure, stating, "These are issues that aren’t new to us."

The event occurred as the Government Accountability Office released a report warning that U.S. aircraft guidance systems are vulnerable to spoofing and hacking, a finding the Department of Transportation agreed to address through nine specific recommendations.