The Federal Aviation Administration said it has resolved an equipment outage at an air traffic facility in Philadelphia that severely disrupted air travel in the Northeast and led to the cancellation of hundreds of flights.
Transport Minister Sean Duffy said earlier on Monday evening that telecommunications lines at all airports in the region had been repaired and operations were resuming, but it would take time to iron out existing delays.
The outage occurred after a main line failure at a Philadelphia facility that directs flights in and out of major hubs, including Newark Liberty International Airport and Philadelphia International Airport. The FAA later discovered that the backup fiber optic cable was also inoperable because it was accidentally severed by Amtrak construction crews.
The outages wreaked havoc across the Northeast and extended disruption to other New York-area airports, including LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy International and New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport, which handles private jets. Flights were grounded throughout the day, causing widespread delays and cancellations and also affecting flights to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
FAA Administrator Brian Bedford and Duffy said at an event in Washington on Monday that the issue highlights the need to modernize air traffic.
The chaos in travel has cast a pall over the FAA’s new Artificial Intelligence Air Transport (SMART) tool, which is designed to identify areas where congestion or weather could disrupt travel and recommend changes to reduce delays and cancellations. The FAA begins using the new system in a “limited mode” in the airspace around Washington on Monday
Copyright 2026 Bloomberg.
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