Fiber cable cut near Raleigh-Durham airport halts flights, causes long delays

A fiber-optic cable was cut near Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina on Monday, disrupting flights for hours and prompting ground stops from the Federal Aviation Administration.

A contractor severed the line while doing plumbing work nearby, according to the account given to local media. An airport representative first put departure delays at roughly 20 minutes after the damage occurred that morning. Aircraft began moving again around 11:30 a.m., though the problems carried on into the afternoon as the FAA added traffic restrictions.

The agency said repairs at the airport were taking longer than anticipated and that it expected to revise its ground delay program. During parts of the disruption, its delay program capped arrivals at as few as 10 aircraft per hour. Arrival delays averaged more than two hours, and some flights were called off. By Monday afternoon, one local outlet counted 212 delayed flights and nine cancellations.

Monday's trouble came after other telecommunications failures that have hit air traffic operations. In one earlier case, a primary circuit failed at a Philadelphia air traffic control facility and a backup fiber line was also cut, unsettling flights across the Northeast. The FAA is working to swap out older communications equipment as part of a wider modernization push. Officials have not said publicly which systems at Raleigh-Durham were involved or whether backup connections were in place.