Normal air traffic operations are slowly resuming across the US on Wednesday after a technical failure of a major pilot notification system resulted in the cancellation of thousands of flights for several hours. The Federal Aviation Administration announced earlier in the morning that it had encountered its Notices to Air Missions, or NOTAMs, which alert pilots and other personnel to airborne issues. The FAA ordered airlines to delay all domestic departures on Wednesday morning, but lifted the ground stop several hours later just before 9 a.m. ET.
“Normal air traffic operations are slowly resuming across the United States following an overnight failure of the Notice to Air Mission system, which provides safety information to flight crews. The ground stop has been lifted. Continuing to investigate the cause of the problem.” the FAA said in a tweet.
According to FlightAware, a flight tracking company, more than 3,700 flights in or out of the US were delayed and more than 600 canceled due to the system failure.
More than 21,000 flights were scheduled to take off in the US on Wednesday, mostly domestic travel, and about 1,840 international flights were expected to head to the US, the AP reported, citing aviation data firm Cerium.
The FAA previously said it was making progress restoring its Notice to Air Mission system and resuming departures at Newark Liberty International Airport and Atlanta International Airport due to air traffic congestion in those areas. “We expect departures to resume at other airports at 9 a.m. ET,” it said.
“Currently all flights in the sky are safe to land. Pilots check the NOTAM system before takeoff. Air missions notify pilots about closed runways, equipment outages, and other potential hazards at or along the flight path.” alerts that may affect flight,” the FAA said.
It had earlier said that operations in the national airspace system were affected. President Joe Biden was briefed on the FAA system outage by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a tweet, “There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the President directed DOT to conduct a full investigation into the cause. The FAA will provide regular updates.”
Transportation Secretary Buttigieg said he is in contact with the FAA and is monitoring the situation. “I have been in contact with the FAA this morning regarding an outage affecting a critical system for providing safety information to pilots. The FAA is working to resolve this issue quickly and safely so that Air traffic can resume normal operations, and will continue to provide updates.” he said in a tweet.