Folks, I almost spilled my coffee reading this one – a Federal Aviation Administration equipment outage is causing significant flight delays at five major Northeast airports, including Newark Liberty International, Teterboro, Philadelphia International, LaGuardia, and John F. Kennedy International, all because some construction contractors got a little too enthusiastic with their digging and cut a Verizon cable. I mean, who needs a backup plan when you’ve got a shovel and a dream, right? According to Verizon, the damaged cable was adjacent to an Amtrak rail line in New Jersey, and the company is not responsible for the damage. Bless their hearts, they’re working hard to repair it, but in the meantime, flights are being delayed, and I’m over here wondering how this kind of thing still happens in this day and age.
As I’m reading through this article, I’m thinking to myself, “You can’t make this stuff up” – construction contractors digging up and cutting a critical cable, causing chaos at some of the busiest airports in the country. The Verizon statement said, “We have a fiber cable running adjacent to an Amtrak rail line in New Jersey. Construction contractors working in the area dug up and cut our cable.” I’m no expert, but it seems like maybe they should’ve had a plan in place to prevent this kind of thing from happening.
The impacted airports are doing their best to get back to normal, with arrivals resuming at the Philadelphia Airport in a limited capacity, and flights also resuming at LaGuardia, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. But still, the FAA has issued ground stops and delays due to issues with Philadelphia TRACON, which is a facility that integrates radar approach control and air traffic control operations. It’s a bit of a mess, and I’m not sure when things will get back to normal, but I’m sure the folks at the FAA are working hard to get everything sorted out.
Now, I know what you’re thinking – how does this kind of thing happen? Well, it turns out that this isn’t the first time TRACON has experienced issues. Last May, there was a roughly two-second radio outage, and days before that, a separate outage prompted a ground stop for Newark-bound flights. The FAA had insisted that new upgrades to the facility would prevent new outages, but I guess that’s not exactly how it played out.
The Department of Transportation had introduced a new fiber optic cable between Philadelphia and New York to improve air traffic control telecommunications at the facility that handles flights in and out of Newark. But I guess that’s not enough to prevent human error, or in this case, contractor error. Somewhere in Atlanta, a producer thought this sounded terrifying, and now we’ve got a big story on our hands.
In conclusion, it’s been a bit of a wild ride reading about this FAA equipment outage and the subsequent flight delays. But hey, at least the airports are getting back to normal, and the FAA is working hard to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. And who knows, maybe next time, the construction contractors will think twice before digging up a critical cable. As I always say, “you can’t make this stuff up,” but I guess that’s just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. 🙄
Armchair patriot. Believes in the free market, cold beer, and that there’s always a guy named George behind every CNN segment.
Former remote-throwing champion turned #1 couch commentator on liberal panic in the media. Born in Texas (or so his mug says), he earned a degree in Fake Newsology & Beer Philosophy from YouTube University.
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