That was the backup connection. The primary failed, and concurrently the backup had been severed by a construction crew.
A more useful comment might have been to say something about the depth of the backup, having only one backup connection not being enough.
No one notices the thousands of times the redundant links works just fine. We only notice when the primary has an outage and a construction crew cuts a fiber line at the same time.
I have literally spraypainted the pavement and wall - "One fibre goes here, and down on the corner there, the other fibre goes there" - just to ensure a good separation of routes. I want the pinch point to be within the rack that the routers sit in.
I don't get why an airport can't do similar.
So they didnt have a redundant connection. They had 1 live one that was severed.
Do they seriously not have a backup connection? I would have expected them to have a backup stelite or maybe even a 4G/5G mobile data system in place.
If I can use my phone as a Hotspot when Comcast is doing some service so I can workd, I don't understand what idiot designed an airport without backup connections.