On Monday morning, the FAA issued a ground stop for New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) due to an equipment outage.
The order means that all flights arriving to and departing from Newark are currently delayed.
Newark wasn’t the only East Coast airport affected by the equipment outage.
"The FAA is pausing flights into Philadelphia International, Teterboro and Newark Liberty International airports due to issues with some frequencies at Philadelphia TRACON," a spokesperson told CBS News on Monday.
The TRACON in Philadelphia is a remote air traffic control facility that handles air traffic for both the New Jersey area as well as the Philadelphia Airport (PHL).
High-profile outages of outdated equipment at the facility in the spring of 2025, including air traffic controllers losing contact with at least one arriving plane, caused staff at the Philadelphia TRACON to take mental health leave from their jobs due to stress.
The combination of low staffing and equipment issues caused travel chaos at Newark for several weeks in the summer of 2025.
The incidents also caused widespread safety concerns and calls to overhaul the entire national air traffic control system, which the FAA is still undertaking.
Those past incidents were caused by outages of telecommunications equipment. It’s not yet clear what equipment went out at the TRACON on Monday.
Travelers should check with the airline for the latest flight scheduling information.
It’s not clear how long the ground stop at Newark and Philadelphia will last. The FAA’s alert says the possibility for the order to be extended is “medium.”
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