New York, New York - Hundreds of flights from East Coast airports were canceled or delayed Monday due to a telecommunications line outage caused by a construction mistake, US officials said.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on X that around 2:00 PM ET, flights were resuming at LaGuardia Airport and Philadelphia, while flights into Newark and JFK Airports were paused.

"An Amtrak construction crew accidentally cut into a fiber line in New Jersey, which caused a telecom outage and forced FAA to pause flights in the Northeast," Duffy said.

Around 2:00 PM ET, Newark Airport, a key New York City-area hub, had 168 flights canceled and 97 delayed, while Philadelphia had 63 canceled flights and 189 delays, according to FlightAware.

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Monday's airport disruption stemmed from two problems, according to Bryan Bedford, head of the Federal Aviation Administration.

After identifying an outage in the primary telecom line, "we discovered that the backup fiber had a break," Bedford said following a briefing to reporters on new air traffic technologies.

Bedford described the rupture on the backup line as "massive" due to the construction mistake.

He said he expected the primary system to be restored by early afternoon but estimated that repairing the backup line would need 13 hours.