A Verizon fibre cable critical to air traffic control was accidentally severed by construction workers in New Jersey on Monday, causing widespread disruptions across the Northeast. The outage triggered ground stops at all three major New York City airports and forced hundreds of flight cancellations, highlighting the aviation sector's vulnerability to telecommunications infrastructure failures. As of Monday evening, the damaged line has been repaired and airport operations were resuming, though significant delays remained.

Responsibility for the incident has been disputed amongst stakeholders. The US Transportation Secretary initially blamed an Amtrak crew, but Amtrak has stated that a New Jersey Transit contractor working on New Jersey Transit property was responsible. Over 1,000 flights were cancelled across the United States as a result of the outage. Verizon has disclaimed responsibility, stating that construction contractors cut the cable, whilst the FAA discovered the breach through a circuit failure.