Northeast air traffic recovers after Philadelphia-area ATC outage

Air traffic across the northeastern United States was returning to normal Monday evening after an outage at a regional air traffic control facility, though disruptions were expected to persist.

Ground stops at New York-JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, Philadelphia and two smaller New York-area airports were lifted Monday evening. Hours-long delays began to ease once those restrictions were removed.

By midnight, tracking data showed 8,400 flights into, out of or within the United States had been delayed and 1,141 cancelled. Not all were tied to the outage, but a large share originated in the New York and Philadelphia areas, with effects also showing up in markets such as Boston.

The trouble started shortly after 1:30 p.m., when a circuit at the Philadelphia TRACON stopped working. According to the FAA, a backup line in New Jersey had earlier been severed by an Amtrak construction crew.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at around 6 p.m. that the cable had been fixed and flights could resume. Clearing the backlog might take time, he said, and he told travellers to confirm their flight status with their carrier.

Earlier, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told reporters the failed circuit was one of the older L3 Verizon circuits the agency is replacing.