A construction crew working on a rail project between New Brunswick and North Brunswick, New Jersey, accidentally severed a Verizon fiber-optic cable at around 9:45 a.m. on September 21, 2026, setting off a cascade of air traffic control failures across the Northeast. The cut disabled the backup circuit at the Federal Aviation Administration's Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control facility — which guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty International and Philadelphia International airports — just as the facility's primary circuit had already failed. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the problem began with an initial circuit failure, and when controllers attempted to switch to the backup feed, they discovered that fiber line had also been severed [Source: CNBC].
The FAA halted flights bound for Newark and Philadelphia and forced nearly 100 planes to divert to other US airports. Ground stops were imposed at Newark Liberty International, Philadelphia International, Teterboro, LaGuardia, and John F. Kennedy International airports. By 6 p.m., more than 600 flights in and out of Newark had been canceled — more than half of the day's schedule — while more than 200 Philadelphia flights were canceled and more than 400 delayed, according to FlightAware data. Departure delays reached up to 150 minutes out of Newark and Philadelphia. A total of 165 flights diverted to 43 airports as a result of the outage [Source: Business Insider]. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced shortly after 5 p.m. that telecom lines had been repaired and all flights were resuming across the Northeast.
NJ Transit confirmed its construction crew severed the cable and noted the crew was operating approximately 10 feet from utility markings [Source: CNBC]. Verizon stated that 'construction contractors working in the area dug up and cut our cable' and said the company was not responsible for the damage [Source: CNN]. Transportation Secretary Duffy initially attributed the cut to an Amtrak construction crew on social media, but an Amtrak spokesperson clarified the crew worked for NJ Transit [Source: NBC News].
Monday's outage was not the first time the Philadelphia TRACON facility had been linked to major Northeast flight disruptions. The facility experienced a series of communications outages in May 2025, including a roughly two-second radio outage in Philadelphia TRACON Area C, days after a separate outage had prompted a ground stop for Newark-bound flights. The facility had also relocated from Long Island to Philadelphia the previous summer, after which the Department of Transportation introduced a new fiber-optic cable between Philadelphia and New York to improve telecommunications for the facility handling Newark traffic. Congress approved $12.5 billion last year to address the air traffic system's aging technology and increase the number of air traffic controllers [Source: Time News].
Sources: CNN, CNBC, NBC News, Business Insider, Time News