Ground stops at John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark Liberty airports on Tuesday followed a communications failure caused by a construction crew cutting a backup fiber optic cable in Philadelphia. The Federal Aviation Administration also halted flights into Philadelphia and Boston, with disruptions extending to Teterboro and Westchester airports. The outage disabled radio and radar equipment at the Philadelphia control facility, forcing hundreds of aircraft to remain at their origins.

A new circuit is scheduled for installation and operation by 1:30 p.m. local time, though the timing for lifting all ground stops remains unclear. The disruption coincides with the arrival of foreign leaders in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford apologized for the outage and stated that incoming flights will not restart until the airspace is verified as safe.