FAA halts flights to major US East Coast airports amid outage

FAA halts East Coast flights due to equipment outage, affecting major US airports in New York, Newark, and Philadelphia.The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has halted flights to several busy East Coast airports amid an equipment outage, snarling more than 1,000 flights.On Monday, the FAA issued ground stops at large commercial airports, including New York’s John F Kennedy International (JFK) and LaGuardia; Newark Liberty International in New Jersey, as well as Boston Logan and Philadelphia-international-airport" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="18488" data-entity-type="location">Philadelphia International Airport.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4US warns hundreds of Boeing jets may require seat safety inspectionslist 2 of 4FAA says Trump’s Marine One briefly flew too close to passenger jetlist 3 of 4Bombardier pushes back as Trump threatens aircraft sales banlist 4 of 4US threatens to ground Iranian airlines worldwide from Wednesdayend of listThe flights were halted on the day that 130 world leaders and dozens of ministers were arriving in New York for the annual high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post on social media platform X that flights have resumed into New York’s LaGuardia and into Philadelphia, but that ground stops are still in effect at Newark, JFK, and Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. The ground stop has also been lifted in Boston.FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told reporters on Monday that it had “lost the primary circuit” at what is called Philadelphia TRACON, or Terminal Radar Approach Control, which controls air traffic into Philadelphia and airports across the busy northeast US airspace.Bedford said that the backup fibre had a break and told reporters that it could take up to 13 hours to repair. He said the cut was between the city of New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Newark, New Jersey, which is home to Newark-liberty-international-airport" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="18881" data-entity-type="location">Newark Liberty International Airport.“An Amtrak construction crew accidentally cut into a fiber line in New Jersey which caused a telecom outage and forced FAA to pause flights in the Northeast,” Duffy said in a post on X.