A second investigation has opened into the Newark airport shutdown after a primary telecom circuit failed in Philadelphia and a construction crew severed backup fiber in New Jersey. The outage interrupted commercial arrivals for hours.
The failures unfolded in sequence. At about 9:45 a.m. on September 21, 2026, a construction crew accidentally cut a fiber-optic cable near New Brunswick and Newark.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the primary circuit at the Philadelphia facility serving Newark had already failed. When the system switched to its backup, officials discovered that line was broken too.
Bedford said repairs to the backup fiber would probably take 13 hours, while a replacement circuit was ready to install. “It’s massive, I’m told,” he said. The dual failure left air traffic operations without either working connection.
The first blame pointed to Amtrak, then shifted to an NJ Transit crew
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy initially attributed the cut to an Amtrak construction crew. He said the crew had cut a fiber line in New Jersey, forcing the FAA to pause flights in the Northeast.
The account changed. Amtrak pointed to a New Jersey Transit contractor, while NJ Transit said its own crew was working on the Delco Lead project.
Duffy later said the primary telecom switch had failed first and that a NJ Transit construction crew accidentally cut the backup. He said flights across the Northeast had ground to a halt, with operations resuming by the afternoon.
The competing accounts have not settled who was responsible for the severed line. They also leave the failure’s two parts distinct: a primary circuit problem in Philadelphia, followed by discovery of a damaged backup cable in New Jersey.
The outage halted arrivals and spread delays across five airports
Newark had no commercial flights landing from about 9:40 a.m. until just after 5:20 p.m. local time. Commercial traffic there remained near a standstill through much of the day.
The effects reached Newark Liberty, Teterboro, Philadelphia International, LaGuardia and JFK. The disruption also produced more than 1,000 flight cancellations nationwide and over 6,000 delays on September 21.
Ground stops and delayed operations affected travelers well beyond Newark. The airport’s arrival pause lasted into the late afternoon, even as a replacement telecom circuit was ready for installation.
NJ Transit and Verizon disagree over the cable and its markings
NJ Transit said its crew was working about 10 feet from utility markings. The agency was still trying to determine whether Verizon or a contractor had placed them.
Verizon rejected responsibility for the cut, saying construction contractors in the area dug up and severed its cable. The company also said, “Our cables were properly placed.”
NJ Transit said it was “working closely with Verizon and the contractor as the incident was being investigated.” That inquiry now faces a practical question alongside the competing accounts: who marked the utilities near the crew’s work area?
