A damaged fiber-optic cable near Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina disrupted air traffic Monday, prompting FAA ground stops and delays that continued for hours. The outage affected hundreds of flights after a contractor severed the cable during nearby plumbing work.
According to local WRAL, an airport representative initially reported departure delays of about 20 minutes after the cable was damaged Monday morning. Flights appeared to resume around 11:30 a.m., but the disruption continued throughout the afternoon as the FAA implemented additional traffic restrictions.
FAA Extends Ground Delays
“RDU repairs are taking longer than expected, ground stop was issued with a GDP revision anticipated,” the FAA said in an operations advisory Monday afternoon.
The agency’s delay program restricted arriving aircraft to as few as 10 per hour during portions of the disruption. Average arrival delays exceeded two hours, and some flights were canceled. Local outlet ABC11 reported 212 delayed flights and nine cancellations by Monday afternoon.
Recent Communications Failures
Monday’s disruption follows several other telecommunications failures affecting air traffic operations, including a September outage at Philadelphia TRACON that disrupted flights across the Northeast after a primary circuit failed and a backup fiber line was severed.
The FAA is currently working to replace aging communications infrastructure as part of a broader modernization effort. Officials have not publicly detailed which systems at Raleigh-Durham were affected or whether backup connections were available.
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