Flight operations restarted Monday evening at major New York area airports after a communications failure at the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control center in Philadelphia triggered widespread cancellations and delays across the U.S. Northeast on September 21, 2026. The outage lasted several hours, during which no commercial flights landed at Newark Liberty International Airport from approximately 9:40 a.m. to just after 5:20 p.m. local time.
Flight disruptions at Newark, Philadelphia, LaGuardia, and JFK
Monday’s failure led to the cancellation of more than 600 flights in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport and over 200 departures and arrivals at Philadelphia International Airport. New York City-area airports including
Newark, LaGuardia, and John F. Kennedy International Airport all experienced disruptions. Early Tuesday morning, Newark reported about 40 flight delays and nearly 60 cancellations, as recorded by flight tracking service Flightaware.com.
Cause of outage linked to damaged FAA communication lines
The Federal Aviation Administration identified the primary communications circuit at the Philadelphia air traffic control facility as having failed Monday morning. Attempts to switch to the backup fiber optic line failed when it was found severed. The damage occurred during railroad construction between Newark and New Brunswick, New Jersey. Amtrak attributed the severed fiber optic line to a New Jersey Transit construction crew working in the area. This facility
had also been linked to flight disruptions at Newark earlier in the spring.
Traveler impact and official response
The outage caused air traffic controllers to lose radar and communications capabilities for hours, halting commercial flights at Newark and affecting the entire region. Some airlines allowed passengers to change their flights without fees due to the disruption. The FAA advised travelers to verify the status of their flights prior to travel. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy acknowledged on social media that “it will take some time to clear all existing delays” after operations resumed.
The disruptions coincided with arrivals in New York City for the
U.N. General Assembly, impacting several foreign dignitaries including Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, who missed a General Assembly event Monday but arrived in New York by that evening.
