Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Airports across the US Northeast resumed operations on Monday after damaged communications lines at a key Federal Aviation Administration facility in Philadelphia were repaired, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. The outage caused hours of disruption, with hundreds of flights cancelled and major delays at airports serving New York City, Philadelphia and Newark.
The biggest impact was at Newark Liberty International Airport, where more than 600 flights were cancelled and commercial traffic was almost halted for much of the day. Duffy said in an online post that, despite the repairs, “it will take some time to clear all existing delays”.
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The FAA said the main communications line at its Philadelphia facility failed earlier on Monday. At the same time, the backup fibre optic line had been cut, leaving air traffic controllers without radar or communications for hours. Regional control centres use two lines to carry radar and communications data, a primary and a backup. The FAA said a circuit on the primary line failed on Monday morning, and when the system tried to switch to the backup, workers found that the fibre optic line had been severed.
At Newark, no commercial flights landed from about 9.40 am until just after 5.20 pm local time, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24. More than 200 flights to and from Philadelphia International Airport were also cancelled, while LaGuardia and John F Kennedy airports in New York were also affected. By Monday evening, flights were resuming at those airports.
Some airlines allowed passengers to change flights without charge, and the FAA advised travellers to check the status of their flights before leaving for the airport. The outage came as President Donald Trump and several foreign leaders were travelling to New York City for the United Nations General Assembly.
Passenger Cindy Phan said her morning flight from Newark to Minneapolis was delayed several times before she learnt at around 3 pm that it had been cancelled and moved to Tuesday, forcing her to pay for another night in a hotel. “We could have had a whole day in New York,” Phan said, adding that she wanted to get home to her “two little Chihuahua babies”.
The technical trouble was linked to the same FAA facility in Philadelphia that caused several disruptions at Newark airport last spring. Earlier in the day, Duffy said an Amtrak construction crew was responsible. Amtrak, however, said the work was being carried out by a New Jersey Transit construction crew in the area between Newark and New Brunswick, New Jersey.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told reporters the agency had focused on restoring the primary connection quickly by installing a new circuit, while work was also under way to repair the backup fibre optic line. Verizon said its technicians were also working to restore service. Bedford had earlier described the fibre break as “massive” and said it would take several hours to fix.
The primary circuit that failed is due to be replaced under a wider overhaul of the US air traffic control system. Also on Monday, the FAA began testing a new computer system that uses AI to help predict scheduling conflicts and weather-related problems so controllers can reroute traffic. That system is being tested only in the Washington, DC, area for now and did not appear to be linked to the outage. Overall, the repairs allowed operations to restart, but airports across the Northeast continued to deal with the fallout from hours of disruption.
With PTI Inputs
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
