Hundreds of US flights cancelled due to outage

On Monday, hundreds of flights originating from US east coast airports were either cancelled or delayed due to a telecommunications line outage, according to US officials. The telecommunications line outage was caused by an accidental cut by an Amtrak construction crew in New Jersey, which disrupted the primary fiber line, resulting in a telecom outage.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed that around 1,900 GMT, flights were resuming at LaGuardia Airport and Philadelphia, while flights into Newark and JFK Airports were paused. Amtrak, the US passenger train company, is responsible for the construction work that led to the fiber line damage. At 1:00 PM GMT, Newark Airport, a crucial hub near New York City, had 168 flights cancelled and 97 delayed, while Philadelphia experienced 63 cancelled flights and 189 delays, according to FlightAware.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) head, Bryan Bedford, revealed that apart from the primary telecom line outage, there was also a significant rupture in the backup fiber line due to the construction mistake. Bedford estimated that restoring the primary system would occur by early afternoon, but repairing the backup line would require approximately 13 hours.