Widespread flight delays in U.S. after FAA computer outage
Planes were stuck on the ground for hours across the United States on Wednesday, leading to thousands of canceled and delayed flights after a government system used to give pilots safety and other information broke down overnight.
The White House initially said that there was no evidence of a cyberattack behind the outage that ruined travel plans for millions of passengers. President Joe Biden said Wednesday morning that he directed the Department of Transportation to investigate.
The outage showed how dependent the world's largest economy is on air travel, and how much air travel depends on an antiquated computer system to generate alerts called NOTAMs - or Notice to Air Missions - to pilots and others.
Before a flight takes off, pilots and airline dispatchers must review the notices, which include information about weather, runway closures or construction and other information that could affect the flight. The system was once telephone-based, with pilots calling dedicated flight service stations for the information, but has moved online.
The NOTAM system broke down late Tuesday and was not fixed until 9 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, leading to about 1,200 flight cancelations and more than 7,800 delays by early afternoon on the East Coast, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.
Even after the Federal Aviation Administration lifted the order grounding planes, the chaos was expected to linger. More than 21,000 flights were scheduled to take off in the U.S. Wednesday, mostly domestic trips, and about 1,840 international flights expected to fly to the U.S., according to aviation data firm Cirium.
Airports in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta were seeing between 30% and 40% of flights delayed.
"There was a systems issue overnight that led to a ground stop because of the way safety information was moving through the system," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said at a press conference. "That was resolved, which allowed the ground stop to be lifted at 9 this morning, but through the day we're going to see the effects of that rippling through the system."
Buttigieg said his agency was now turning to understand what caused the NOTAM system to go down.
According to FAA advisories, the NOTAM system failed at 8:28 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday preventing new or amended notices from being distributed to pilots. The FAA resorted to a telephone hotline to keep departures flying overnight, but as daytime traffic picked up it overwhelmed the telephone backup system.
The FAA ordered all departing flights grounded early Wednesday morning, affecting all passenger and shipping flights.
Some medical flights could get clearance and the outage did not impact any military operations or mobility. Flights for the U.S. military's Air Mobility Command, were not affected.
Buttigieg acknowledged the flight delays and cancellations caused by the outage, but emphasized "the main thing I want everybody to understand is that every step of the way safety is going to be our north star, as it always is."
"We are now pivoting to focus on understanding the causes of the issue," he said.
European flights into the U.S. appeared to be largely unaffected. Carriers from Ireland's Aer Lingus to Germany's Lufthansa said there was no impact on their schedules.
