Overview
- A damaged fiber‑optic cable in New Jersey knocked out a backup telecommunications link on Monday, degrading air‑traffic control communications and prompting the FAA to impose ground stops along the U.S. East Coast.
- Lufthansa flight LH412 from Munich to Newark turned back over the North Atlantic after roughly eight hours in the air and landed back in Munich, with the same service operating again the next day with a roughly 40‑minute delay.
- Other transatlantic Lufthansa services were disrupted: LH400 diverted to Boston before continuing to JFK, LH402 made an intermediate stop in Toronto, and LH404 returned to Frankfurt after turning back over the Atlantic.
- Technicians restored the damaged links after several hours, ground stops were lifted in the evening and most operations resumed the following day, though passengers faced cancellations and delays at airports including JFK, Newark, LaGuardia, Boston and Philadelphia.
- Responsibility for the cut cable is under investigation with reports alternately naming an NJ Transit contractor and an Amtrak construction crew, and regulators and carriers are likely to review how telecom redundancies and construction safeguards failed during the outage.