Technical glitch at US northeastern airports delays thousands of flights, over 1,000 cancelled
A communication system failure at air traffic control facilities disrupted flights at New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Boston airports on Monday.
Air travellers in the northeastern United States faced major disruption on Monday after a sudden technical fault in the air traffic control communication system threw air services in the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Boston areas into complete disarray.
Interestingly, just hours before the disruption, the United States had announced on Monday morning, amid tensions of an Iran-US conflict, that it intended to completely halt Iran's air services, and had warned of strict sanctions against any country that helped Iranian aircraft. However, Iran has no connection to this incident, and no one has suspected Iranian involvement so far, since a malfunction of this kind is itself considered a rare occurrence in the United States. According to available information, the entire episode was purely due to technical reasons, which threw the US passenger flight system into disarray.
Landings were halted for some time at a few airports, while many flights were delayed or had their schedules changed. Some flights had to be diverted to other airports.
A communication circuit at a Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control facility near Philadelphia suddenly developed a fault. Attempts were then made to activate the backup system, but matters worsened when a crucial fiber-optic cable was cut during ongoing construction work in New Jersey. Because air traffic controllers were unable to communicate properly with aircraft, movement of planes was restricted at some locations as a safety measure.
New York's three major airports, JFK, LaGuardia and Newark, were significantly affected by the technical trouble. Flight movements were also restricted at Philadelphia and Boston airports. At one point, the number of delayed flights at Newark airport ran into the thousands. Passengers had to wait for hours at airports, and many flights had their schedules changed.
The technical disruption was not confined to a few airports but affected the entire US aviation system. According to information received, around 7,000 flights were affected by delays or cancellations. Of these, about 1,400 flights were affected at the three major New York airports alone.
Meanwhile, after the broken fiber cable was repaired, air services gradually began returning to normal. However, the delays that had already occurred continued to affect the schedules of subsequent flights.
