Ground stop delays hundreds of flights at PHL following equipment failure

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know! Flights out of Philadelphia International Airport were grounded for much of Monday after the Federal Aviation Administration said an equipment malfunction caused cascading delays across airports across the Northeast. Long delays are still expected at PHL, according to the FAA’s airspace system status, which, as of 6 p.m. Monday, estimates average delays of 3 ½ hours. Nearly 400 flights in and out of PHL have been delayed, according to 6abc. Flights were grounded just before noon after a circuit blew at the Philadelphia TRACON air traffic control facility, which guides aircrafts at PHL and Newark Liberty International Airport. When crew members tried to switch to a backup system, they discovered it had been damaged by a construction crew in New Jersey. On social media, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said an Amtrak construction crew accidentally cut the wire, “which caused a telecom outage.” “This incident underscores the need for additional funding to modernize aging infrastructure and prevent disruptions like this in the future,” Duffy said on X. The BBC reports the wire is about 600 feet long and will take about 13 hours to repair. The equipment issue happened the same day the FAA rolled out the Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories (SMART) tool, which uses artificial intelligence to collect weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow and controller staffing metrics. The data is then used to figure out “where planes are going, how much traffic the system can handle, and where congestion or weather could cause challenges.”