By Pete Muntean, Alexandra Skores, Aaron Cooper, CNN

(CNN) — A telecommunication outage caused Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controllers in Dallas to lose radar and some communications Friday afternoon, leading to flights being stopped at the area’s airports.

“The FAA is slowing flights at Dallas Love Field and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport due to a reported local telephone company equipment issue,” the FAA said in a statement. “The FAA is working with the telephone company to determine the cause.”

Air traffic controllers rely on telecommunications lines from local phone companies to connect their facilities, including the airport towers and the Terminal Radar Approach Control, which handles flights arriving or departing airports.

“We’ve lost all radar and phone communications,” the controller in the Dallas Love Field Air Traffic Control tower said in audio recorded by LiveATC.net. “I’m not departing anybody until we can get a system setup. We have no coms with approach right now,”

“Approach wanted to pass on to you to stop all departures. They can’t get a hold of you. They are having some com issues, I guess,” a Southwest pilot told the Love Field tower.

“Yeah, I think the entire Metroplex just went down,” the controller responded on the radio. “We got a hold of somebody.”

As of 3 p.m. CT there were 570 flight delays at DFW and 66 cancellations, along with nearly 200 delays at Love Field, according to the website FlightAware.

The latest publicly available alert from the Federal Aviation Administration shows that Dallas flights are being delayed an average of about three hours.

DFW is the third-busiest airport in the world and a major hub for American Airlines. Southwest Airlines operates a hub at Love Field.

“Inbound flights to DAL have either been slowed or are being held at their departure airports. A handful of our flights diverted,” Southwest said in a statement. “We will work to get them back on track as soon as the FAA gives the go-ahead.”

Earlier this year, problems with a phone company telecommunications line between Long Island, New York and Philadelphia caused Air traffic controllers there to repeatedly lost contact with flights approaching or departing Newark Liberty International Airport.

On April 28, when the existing cable failed, radios were silenced for 30 seconds and radar scopes went dark for 90 seconds. Five FAA employees working in the facility took 45-days of trauma leave, leading to thousand of delayed flights. Three more outages occurred since then, before a new fiber optic cable became operational.

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy is asking Congress to support a plan for a brand-new air traffic control system, which will cost billions of dollars.

“It’s a substantial piece of work and will take a substantial amount of money,” Duffy said earlier this year.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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