Flight Delays Subside at Newark and Philadelphia Airports After Infrastructure Failure

Flight disruptions at Newark Liberty International and Philadelphia International airports began to normalize on Tuesday, offering relief after a critical infrastructure failure caused widespread chaos across the region the previous day. The outage stemmed from a construction crew accidentally severing a Verizon fiber-optic line in central New Jersey, which disabled a backup radio and radar feed for air traffic controllers.

According to FlightAware data as of 7:10 a.m. ET, approximately 60 flights—roughly 5% of the daily schedule—were canceled at Newark, a significant drop from the more than 600 cancellations recorded on Monday. At Philadelphia International Airport, cancellations numbered around 30, representing about 2% of scheduled operations.

The Federal Aviation Administration reported that the issue came to light only after the primary control system failed and the facility attempted to switch to the damaged backup line. Prior to the partial recovery, the disruption forced more than 100 flights into Newark to divert elsewhere. Many of these were international United Airlines flights, with passengers rerouted to cities including Detroit, Washington, D.C., and Boston.

To assist with the remaining schedule disruptions, United Airlines has incentivized flight attendants with additional pay to accept trips originating from Newark.