New York airport operations resume after disruptions across US Northeast due to technical problems

Flights were taking off and landing at New York City-area airports Tuesday with some delays and cancellations, after hours of disruptions resulting from damaged communications lines at a key air traffic control facility in Philadelphia that were later repaired.

Hundreds of flights were canceled throughout the U.S. Northeast on Monday, including more than 600 into and out of Newark Liberty International Airport, as the outage hit every major airport in the New York City area. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also said in an online post that “it will take some time to clear all existing delays” despite the repairs.

The Newark airport showed about 40 delays and nearly 60 cancellations early Tuesday, according to Flightaware.com, a global flight tracking and aviation data site.

The primary communications line at the Federal Aviation Administration facility in Philadelphia had failed earlier Monday, while the backup fiber optic line was inadvertently severed by railroad construction workers. The failures left controllers without radar or communications for hours.

The outage brought commercial air traffic to a near-standstill at Newark for much of the day, with no commercial flights landing at the airport from about 9:40 a.m. to just after 5:20 p.m. local time, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.

More than 200 flights into and out of Philadelphia International Airport were also canceled, while disruptions hit LaGuardia and Kennedy airports in New York. Flights had resumed by Monday evening.

Some airlines were allowing customers to change flights without charge. The FAA advised travelers to check the status of their flights before heading to the airport.

The outage occurred just as President Donald Trump and numerous foreign leaders were flying into New York City for the U.N. General Assembly. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney missed an event Monday on the sidelines of the General Assembly because of the flight disruptions, but his office said he had arrived in New York by Monday night.

The technical problems stem from the same FAA facility in Philadelphia that caused numerous disruptions at the Newark airport last spring.

Regional control centers like these have two lines that carry radar and communications data in and out: the primary and the backup. The FAA said a circuit on the primary failed Monday morning, and when the system tried to switch to the backup, workers discovered that the fiber optic line had been cut.

Earlier in the day, Duffy said an Amtrak construction crew was to blame. Amtrak, however, pointed to a New Jersey Transit construction crew that was working in the area between Newark and New Brunswick, New Jersey.

AP reporters Rio Yamat and Jessica Hill contributed to this report from Las Vegas.

FILE - A traveler with a smartphone walks past an air traffic control tower at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia on March 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — An attacker opened fire near a high school in western Turkey on Tuesday and wounded at least 11 people, officials said. The suspected shooter was arrested.

At least two of the injured were in serious condition, Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said in a statement on X.

The attack took place in front of a vocational and technical high school in Turgutlu district, in Manisa province, the provincial governor's office said. Police and medical teams were immediately sent to the scene.

HaberTurk news channel said the assailant was a 15-year-old student at the school. The report added that he arrived at the scene armed with a shotgun he took from his grandmother's house and fired randomly near the school before trying to flee the scene on foot.

The motive of the attack was not known, according to Gurlek, who said two chief prosecutors were appointed to investigate the shooting, including claims that the student was bullied at the school.

The assailant's parents and grandfather, who owned the gun, were taken into custody as part of the investigation, Gurlek said.

Security camera video showed the alleged shooter walking down a street carrying a weapon. Another video showed him running down a street, still carrying the weapon.

Anxious parents rushed to the school and confrontations broke out between them and police who blocked the entrance to the building, Cumhuriyet newspaper reported.

The attack came months after Turkey was shocked by two school shootings this year. The government increased security at educational facilities at the start of the academic year last week.

In April, 16 people, mostly students, were wounded when a former student opened fire at a high school in Sanliurfa province in Turkey's southeast. The assailant later killed himself.

The next day, a 14-year-old student opened fire on two classrooms at his school in nearby Kahramanmaras province, killing eight students and a teacher and wounding 13 others. The attacker was killed by police.

People walk past a vocational and technical high school in the Turgutlu district of Manisa province, western Turkey, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, after a gunman opened fire near the school. (IHA via AP)