Airports in New York, Boston and Philadelphia are affected after flights on part of the US East Coast were halted due to an accident caused by a broken fiber optic cable, CBS News reported., quoted by Focus".
The disruptions occurred at a time when 130 world leaders and dozens of ministers are arriving in New York for the annual UN General Assembly summit. According to information from "24 hours" President Iliana Yotova is also among those stranded at the Boston airport.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said flights were starting to resume at some busy airports. Airports in New Jersey were also affected after a fiber optic cable was accidentally severed at a construction site in New Jersey.
While flights in New York and Boston were starting to resume, the FAA said ground operations were still suspended at Newark and Philadelphia airports. FAA Administrator Brian Bedford told reporters that a backup fiber optic cable was accidentally severed by a construction crew in New Jersey, causing significant flight disruptions.
He said a new line would be operational soon. Fewer than a dozen flights at Pearson International Airport in Toronto were affected by the ground operations shutdown in the United States.
Officials at Pearson Airport and Montreal's Trudeau International Airport said they were continuing to monitor the situation and urged passengers flying to or from the United States to contact their airlines directly for updates. FlightAware, a flight tracking website, said more than 600 flights at Newark and Philadelphia airports - or more than 20 percent of them - were delayed. Both airports are served by the Philadelphia TRACON. "Newark" is a major hub for United Airlines, while Philadelphia is a hub for American Airlines.
The problem also forced the rerouting of a number of flights to other airports. Flightradar24, a flight tracking website, reported that flights at “Newark“ were delayed by an average of 112 minutes.
In May 2025, the facility that manages air traffic to and from “Newark“ Airport suffered a series of serious communications outages.