FAA Ground Stop Hits Newark and Teterboro; JFK and LaGuardia Added

NEWARK — An FAA equipment outage on Monday, Sept. 21, 2026, produced ground stops at Newark Liberty International Airport and Teterboro Airport, then spread to other New York-area fields. Flightradar24, the flight-tracking service, posted that JFK and LaGuardia had been added to the list of airports where inbound flights were held on the ground at their origin. The service listed the airports then affected as JFK, LGA, EWR, TEB, PHL and HPN (Westchester County).

That list matches what the FAA and local newsrooms reported through the afternoon, with one caveat on timing: LaGuardia later moved from a ground stop to a ground delay on the FAA status board, while Newark, Teterboro and Philadelphia remained under ground stops attributed to an equipment outage.

What Flightradar24 reported

In an earlier post the same afternoon, Flightradar24 said Newark had seen 92 cancellations and nearly 70 diversions so far that day, and that the outage was holding flights bound for Newark, Philadelphia and Teterboro at their origin airports. Those figures are the tracker’s count at the time of the post, not an FAA total. ABC7 later said officials had reported about 90 diversions at one point. Gothamist, citing FlightAware, said as many as 681 flights had been affected as of Monday afternoon.

What the FAA said

The FAA told newsrooms it was pausing flights into Philadelphia International, Teterboro and Newark Liberty “due to issues with some frequencies at Philadelphia TRACON,” the radar facility that handles arriving and departing traffic in that airspace. The agency’s National Airspace System status board listed the reason at EWR, TEB, PHL and JFK as an equipment outage. LGA was listed with a ground delay for the same reason.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said a primary circuit serving the Philadelphia TRACON failed. When the system switched to backup, crews found a break in the backup fiber, which he described as a construction cut somewhere between Newark and New Brunswick. He said repairing that fiber would take on the order of 13 hours and that a new circuit was being installed. NBC New York reported the failed primary as an older Verizon circuit shared by the airports.

United Airlines, which uses Newark as a hub, said the FAA technology outage was affecting all airlines in the Northeast, according to ABC7.

What a ground stop means

A ground stop holds flights destined for the listed airport on the ground at the departure city. It is not the same as closing the airport. Delays and cancellations then cascade as aircraft and crews fall out of position. The FAA encouraged travelers to check with their airline for individual flights. This story was developing Monday afternoon; stop and delay times on the FAA board were being extended.

Sources: Flightradar24 posts, Sept. 21, 2026; FAA National Airspace System Status and ATCSCC summary; statements from FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford; NBC New York, CBS New York, ABC7, CNN, Gothamist, Axios.