May 01--Dozens of flights were delayed, rerouted or canceled Wednesday when a construction crew cut a fiber optic cable at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, aviation officials said.
The crew was working outside Terminal Four when the line was severed just before 4 p.m., according to spokesman Greg Meyer.
"The fiber optic line had a main data feed to the airport meaning the airlines, aviation department, U.S. Customs, basically anyone that works here at the airport," he said. "We lost phone lines and data for the Internet."
There was a ripple effect. Even WiFi wasn't working for passengers in the terminals, he said. Airlines were passing out bottled water to travelers and there were announcements on the [public address] system.
"We have an internal Code Red system where we communicate to all our airport partners about what's happening," Meyer said. "It's sort of like a reverse 911 where it goes out to everyone's cell phones so we have good internal communications."
Most of the communication interruptions were corrected by 9 p.m., he said.
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