Air travel nightmare: Newark ground stop nears 6th hour; JFK, LGA pause flights – NBC New York

Air travel nightmare: Newark ground stop nears 6th hour; JFK, LGA pause flights  NBC New York

A full ground stop order is in place at Newark Airport. Live flight tracker data showed dozens of planes backed up on the runway at Newark. An all-out air travel nightmare erupted Monday as the Federal Aviation Administration ordered ground stops at major tri-state airport after major tri-state airport because of a failed circuit connecting tri-state hubs, officials say. Newark, Teterboro and Philadelphia International were first to shut down, around 10 a.m. Five hours later, the ground stop orders remained active. Around 1 p.m., JFK and LaGuardia were added to the order, though the latter appeared to be upgraded to a ground delay within an hour. "Equipment outage" was cited as the reason for all of them.

FAA Administration Bryan Bedford later explained that an older Verizon circuit shared by the four airports failed, and when it went to flip into backup mode, crews discovered a break in the fiber cable somewhere between Newark and New Brunswick. That fiber cable would take about 13 hours to repair, Bedford said. Flightaware24, a live flight tracker, earlier showed dozens of jets lined up on a Newark runway awaiting takeoff. The planes later returned to their gates. "Do you guys know what you call an airliner that is going backwards?" one person is heard saying on air traffic control radio. From Newark to