Controllers in Philadelphia lost both radar and radio contact on Monday, September 21, and for several hours the busiest airports around New York went quiet. The Associated Press, reporting through PBS News, said hundreds of flights were canceled across the Northeast. Kennedy, LaGuardia, Newark and Philadelphia were all hit.
The trouble began with a single circuit. Regional control centers like the FAA’s Philadelphia facility move radar and communications data over two lines, a primary and a backup. The Federal Aviation Administration said a circuit on the primary line failed Monday morning. When the system tried to switch to the backup, workers found that the fiber optic cable had been cut.
Who cut the cable
Blame landed quickly, and not in one place. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said an Amtrak construction crew was responsible. Amtrak pointed instead to a New Jersey Transit crew that was working between Newark and New Brunswick, New Jersey. AP described the cut as inadvertent, the work of railroad construction workers.
With both lines down, the facility was left blind and mute. FAA administrator Bryan Bedford told reporters the agency was trying to install a new circuit on the primary line, which could bring the system back before the fiber was mended. He did not know how long either job would take. “That fiber break is probably 13 hours to repair. It’s massive,” Bedford said, according to a video that a CBS transportation reporter posted online. Verizon said its technicians were working to restore service.
A familiar facility
The Philadelphia center is not new to this kind of headline. AP noted that the same facility caused repeated disruptions at Newark Liberty International Airport in the spring of 2025. The circuit that failed on Monday is already slated for replacement under the overhaul of the national air traffic control system.
The timing made things worse. President Donald Trump and numerous foreign leaders were flying into New York City that day for the United Nations General Assembly.
By Monday evening, flights were resuming at all four airports, though AP said significant delays were expected for the rest of the day. Some airlines let customers change flights without a fee. The FAA told travelers to check their flight status before leaving for the airport.
One unrelated development fell on the same day. The FAA began testing a new computer system that uses AI to predict schedule conflicts and weather problems and help controllers reroute traffic. It is being tried first only in the Washington, D.C., area, so it did not appear to be connected to the outages.
