Construction crew cuts Verizon fiber cable, disrupting hundreds of US flights

Hundreds of flights across the Northeast were cancelled or delayed on Monday after construction crews in New Jersey inadvertently severed a Verizon fiber optic cable that supports the Federal Aviation Administration’s air‑traffic control communications. The break was discovered when a circuit failure triggered an alert, prompting FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford to confirm that the damaged fiber disrupted data links used by control towers, forcing ground stops at New York’s three major airports and causing widespread delays at other regional hubs, including Philadelphia International Airport.

Verizon, whose network carries the critical aviation data, issued a statement to CNBC saying it bears “no responsibility for this incident,” attributing the outage to “construction contractors working in the area” that “dug up and cut our cable.” The airline industry is now working to restore normal operations, while investigators assess the extent of the damage and coordinate repairs to prevent similar disruptions in the future.