Fire Alarm at New York Kennedy Airport Control Tower Briefly Halts Operations

NEW YORK_Smoke caused by an equipment problem in the air traffic control tower at John F. Kennedy International Airport triggered a fire alarm that briefly halted arrivals and departures on Monday afternoon.

The building was evacuated from 3:30 p.m. (2030 GMT), when the alarm went off, until 3:53 p.m., Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters said.

There were delays of 15 to 20 minutes on all flights because of the incident, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spokesman Marc La Vorgna said. Two flights were diverted, one from Los Angeles that went to Syracuse and another from Madrid that went to Boston, he said.

The equipment problem was being investigated.

JFK served 37.5 million passengers and handled more than 320,000 flights in 2004. The regional system, which also includes Newark, New Jersey's Liberty International and LaGuardia airports, was the busiest in the nation last year, serving nearly 100 million passengers, the Port Authority said.