Yesterday morning air traffic in the Northeast of the United States almost stopped for a problem to communications of the Federal Aviation Administration, the federal agency that manages air traffic control. The airports of Newark, John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia, Philadelphia and Teterboro have imposed for hours the ground stop, that is the block of arrivals and departures, with effects also on Boston and other ports of the eastern coast.
The problem began around 9:45 with the failure of a communication circuit of the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control, the structure that coordinates an important part of the direct flights to the area of New York and Philadelphia. When the controllers tried to switch to the reserve system, they found that even that could not work: a section of the optical fiber had been damaged during work in New Jersey.
The most obvious consequence was Newark Liberty, where incoming commercial flights were suspended for almost eight hours, from morning until after 17:20. In the evening the airports gradually resumed operations, but with a long tail of cancellations, hijacked planes and crews out of position. The Department of Transport warned passengers that return to normal would take time.
According to data from flight monitoring sites, around 7,000 connections in the United States have been delayed or cancelled over the day. In the three main airports in the New York area, flights were approximately 1,400. In Newark, United Airlines hub, more than half of the scheduled flights was canceled; over one hundred direct planes in the airport were diverted to other airports, even in Chicago and Washington.
The block has arrived at a particularly delicate time for New York, where in these days are expected heads of state, ministers and delegations for the United Nations General Assembly. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had to renounce a summit and an intervention scheduled for last night, after the delay of his flight prevented him from reaching the city on time.
On the responsibility of the cut cable there is not yet a shared version. Secretary of Transport Sean Duffy initially attributed damage to an Amtrak team; Amtrak replied that the work was taking place on a New Jersey Transit property and that he was involved with his contractor. New Jersey Transit explained that the team was working about three meters from the directions of subservices and is still checking whether the error depends on the signalling of the track or the yard. Verizon, who had installed the line, confirmed that the cable was cut during excavation work.
The episode brought a known problem to the centre: the U.S. air traffic control system continues to depend, in different points, on old infrastructures and reserve networks that are not always isolated from the main network failures. The Congress had already allocated $12.5 billion for modernization. Duffy said it would take another 17.5 to complete it. The point that emerged on Monday is not only that a cable can be cut during a job: it is that the system designed to absorb that failure was not available when it was served.
L’articolo A cable cut in New Jersey blocked New York airports for hours proviene da IlNewyorkese.
