An influence outage brought on by an remoted hearth has disrupted flights at one of many busiest airports on the planet.

A terminal at New York Metropolis’s John F Kennedy Worldwide Airport (JFK) was closed on Friday on account of {an electrical} outage that disrupted inbound and outbound flights at one of many world’s busiest airports.

The outage started after {an electrical} panel failed and prompted a small, remoted hearth that was instantly extinguished in a single day in Terminal 1, the airport mentioned. The terminal, one among 5 on the airport, serves a number of worldwide carriers, together with Air France and Lufthansa.

The outage compelled a JFK-bound Air New Zealand airplane to return to Auckland about eight hours into its journey.

Air New Zealand mentioned “diverting to a different US port would have meant the plane would stay on the bottom for a number of days, impacting various different scheduled companies and clients.” The airline mentioned all passengers on the flight have been accommodated on flights leaving Auckland.

The Federal Aviation Administration declined to remark concerning the disruptions to air journey.

As of 1:30pm (18:30 GMT) on Friday, JFK’s web site confirmed 120 inbound and outbound flights have been both delayed or cancelled. About half have been worldwide flights.

In all, about 3 % of flights on the airport had been cancelled on Friday, in accordance with the flight-tracking web site Flightaware.com.

“We apologize there aren’t any new updates in the meanwhile,” JFK mentioned in a tweet on Friday afternoon. “Please proceed to verify together with your air provider for flight standing.”

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, JFK’s proprietor, was working with the terminal’s operator to revive flight operations as rapidly as potential, it mentioned.

JFK mentioned it was working to accommodate affected flights utilizing different terminals on the airport.