Two separate ground stops temporarily snarled traffic at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina on Monday.
According to WRAL-TV, work crews accidentally cut a fiber-optic telecommunications line Monday morning while carrying out a plumbing-related repair. The incident paused flights at Raleigh-Durham for about 20 minutes, and disruptions continued through the afternoon.
The air traffic control tower at the airport remained operational during the outage.
A second ground stop was put in place Monday evening due to what the FAA called an “equipment outage.” It was not immediately clear if the failure was caused by the earlier damage to the fiber line. Flights resumed at 8 p.m., WRAL said.
According to FlightAware, 139 flights were delayed at Raleigh-Durham on Monday, about 41% of the day’s schedule. Twenty-four flights were canceled.
