A contractor cutting a fiber-optic line near the air traffic control tower during a plumbing repair caused widespread flight disruptions at Raleigh-Durham International Airport on Monday. The damage, resulting from plumbing repairs, forced the FAA to issue intermittent ground stops throughout the day, ultimately impacting more than 200 flights and leaving travelers scrambling.
Contractor Cuts Fiber-Optic Line Causing FAA Ground Stops
The operational chaos at RDU began Monday morning when a contractor working on a plumbing repair accidentally cut a fiber-optic line near the Federal Aviation Administration tower. While the tower was later back up and running, according to an RDU spokesperson speaking to ABC11, the resulting connectivity issues prompted the FAA to implement intermittent ground stops between 10:30 a.m. and 8:15 p.m., holding departing aircraft at their gates.
Airport officials confirmed to The News & Observer that the line was repaired by Monday night, allowing operations to normalize. However, the impact of the outage was significant, with 212 delays and nine cancellations recorded by Monday afternoon, including an international traveler whose flight to Rome, Italy, was canceled according to ABC11.
Passengers Struggle to Rebook Travel After Cancellations
For passengers, the disruption meant frantic attempts to rebook travel. Bill Hunt, a Cary resident attempting to reach Europe for an important business meeting scheduled for the following morning, found his original flight canceled, forcing him to seek alternatives at a different hub.
“They got me on that flight in Charlotte. So I just had to get to it because I couldn’t fly from here to Charlotte because everything’s canceled. So I had to get a ride, hitch a ride down there,” Hunt told ABC11.
Bill Hunt, Cary resident
Other passengers faced less severe but still frustrating waits. John Haney, who was attempting to return to Cincinnati, described his experience as manageable despite the inconvenience. It’s not what you want, but, you know, it’s not two hours. It’s not three hours. So we’ll take it,
Haney told ABC11.
Discrepancies in Initial Reporting
Early coverage of the event varied in its assessment of the FAA’s intervention. An initial report from WXII suggested the incident caused only brief delays for some departing flights—specifying they were delayed for about 20 minutes—and explicitly stated there was no ground stop. Later reporting from the airport and its newsgathering partners clarified that the FAA did, in fact, issue intermittent ground stops that persisted for much of the day, causing a much wider scope of disruption than initially indicated.
As of 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Flightaware.com listed 22 remaining delays at RDU. The airport spokesperson deferred to the federal agency for an exact number of affected flights, and the FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The News & Observer regarding the specific number of flights impacted by the ground stops.