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A power outage at an international terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport has temporarily halted incoming and outgoing flights, the airport said on Twitter Thursday afternoon.
People wait in a TSA queue at John F. Kennedy International Airport on June 28, 2022 in New … [+]
Important facts
An overnight fire, which has since been extinguished, and an electrical panel failure caused the power outage, sources say JFK’s Twitter Account.
It’s unclear exactly how many flights are affected by the cancellation, but FlightAware reports 126 delays and 25 cancellations at JFK as of Thursday.
A number of flights scheduled to land at JFK have been diverted to other airports in Boston, Newark and Washington, DC, according to the airport’s website.
JFK said they are working to use other terminals to accommodate flights affected by the outage.
key background
The blackout follows a string of airline glitches in recent months. On Wednesday, German airline Lufthansa suffered a computer failure that led to flight delays and cancellations. The cause was damage to the fiber optic cable during construction work in Frankfurt. Operations later returned to normal airline announced. During Christmas week, Southwest suffered a major meltdown when winter storms slammed into aging systems, causing thousands of flight disruptions across the country. It took days for the airline’s operations to return to normal. The Department of Transportation is currently investigating whether Southwest executives broke federal laws when they knowingly offered unrealistic scheduling options during the holiday season.
tangent
Last month, more than 12,000 domestic flights were affected by a Federal Aviation Administration system outage, causing nationwide delays and cancellations. The FAA later said that its NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system, which relays important information about potential hazards to pilots and flight crew, had failed. On Wednesday, Bill Nolen, acting administrator of the FAA, testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that the preliminary findings of the investigation into the incident found no evidence of malicious intent or cyberattacks. Nolen said a contract worker accidentally deleted files while correcting synchronization between the live primary database and a backup database. As a result of the system outage, Nolen said the FAA implemented a synchronization delay to ensure bad data in one database could not affect a backup database. There will also be a new protocol that will require more than one person to be “present and involved in oversight” when work on the database takes place, Nolen said.
Big number
33,959. That’s how many flights passed through JFK Airport, according to the airport.
Further reading
Power outage at Terminal 1 of New York JFK Airport (CNN)
FAA ‘back to normal’ after system failure even as more flights face delays (Forbes)
