Boston's Logan Airport sees hundreds of flight delays, cancellations amid NYC-area ground stops

More flight delays are expected at Logan Airport in Boston Tuesday, a day after ground stops at airports in the New York City area led to major delays.

More than 480 flights were delayed and more than 70 were canceled at Logan Monday, according to FlightAware. The delays dropped to 87 as of a 9 a.m. Tuesday. 

U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a primary communications line failed at a key FAA facility in Philadelphia Monday. Then construction crews accidentally cut a backup fiber line in New Jersey.  

Ground stops were issued at Newark Liberty, JFK and LaGuardia airports. Some flights that were headed to the NYC area Monday were diverted to Boston.

"We are getting a lot of diversions from impacted airports across the entire system due to ATC equipment issues which are slowing down our scheduled flights. There are also delays due to our current runway construction," a Massport spokesperson told WBZ-TV. "We encourage passengers to check with their airline before coming to the airport."

Delta Air Lines and JetBlue both had more than 50 flight delays each out of Boston. The average delay at Logan was 105 minutes, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, which said a low cloud ceiling was also a contributing factor. International flights lined up on the runway at Logan, with passengers deplaning and boarding buses to the terminal for processing. 

Passengers like John Brito had their flights delayed before ultimately getting canceled.  "I'm just frustrated. I'm done," said Brito.  

"There's nothing I can do about it, but what is the sense of getting upset?" said John Bauer, who was bound for Brazil with a connection in Atlanta, but it was also delayed. "I'm sure it doesn't affect the connecting flight at all, because I'm sure that will take off without a problem. Whether we're on it or not, that is a different question."

The issues were fixed by Monday night, but aviation experts said flight schedules don't snap back that quickly.

"Anytime an airport is shut down for two hours, it takes about eight to ten hours to get back up to speed because flights are out of sequence, crews are out of schedule, and the system basically breaks down," said CBS News travel editor Peter Greenberg. 

The outage affected equipment that uses radar and radios to guide planes as they approach and depart airports, according to airport officials.