{"id":778178,"date":"2026-09-21T21:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T21:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/778178\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T21:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T21:04:11","slug":"flights-delayed-at-major-us-airports-after-cable-cut-by-construction-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/778178\/","title":{"rendered":"Flights delayed at major US airports after cable cut by construction workers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Issue caused by fibre cable severed during construction, US aviation official sayspublished at 19:27 BST<\/p>\n<p>19:27 BST<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and aviation administrator Bryan Bedford just briefly spoke to reporters after an unrelated event.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Bedford confirmed that the malfunction was related to the Terminal Radar Approach Control System, which guides planes during takeoff and landing. He added that a &#8220;circuit failed&#8221;, which then led to the discovery of a backup fibre circuit which had been damaged by construction crews in New Jersey.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said that to repair the backup cable would take around 13 hours. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s massive, I&#8217;m told,&#8221; Bedford said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He added that the cut fibre line is around 600ft (183m) long, and that it was inadvertently damaged during &#8220;construction&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Somebody dug it up,&#8221; Bedford says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fixing the issue requires turning everything off &#8211; &#8220;sanitising the airspace&#8221; &#8211; and making sure that all flights are safe. So far, around 90 flights have been diverted to other regions, he estimated, saying he didn&#8217;t know about the number of total cancellations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Duffy added that these problems &#8220;are not new to us&#8221; and called on Congress to provide more cash to update the system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Issue caused by fibre cable severed during construction, US aviation official sayspublished at 19:27 BST 19:27 BST US&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":778179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-778178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}