A major FAA system outage has continued to disrupt air travel across the US on Wednesday.
The Federal Aviation Authority ordered a temporary halt to all domestic flight departures overnight to restore its Notice to Air Missions system, a critical system that alerts commercial airlines to real-time flight hazards and restrictions.
The FAA resumed normal air traffic operations just before 6 a.m. PT, but thousands of flights were already delayed by then and threw off the normal day’s schedule as airlines tried to play catchup.
As of 9:45 a.m. PT, more than 7,500 flights in or into the US were delayed and over 1,100 cancelled, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware.
Update 5: Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the U.S. following an overnight outage to the Notice to Air Missions system that provides safety info to flight crews. The ground stop has been lifted.
We continue to look into the cause of the initial problem
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023
“Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the U.S. following an overnight outage to the Notice to Air Missions system that provides safety info to flight crews. The ground stop has been lifted,” the FAA said in a tweet at 5:50 a.m. PT Wednesday.
Airports across the country urged people to check their flight status.
The FAA is looking into the cause of the initial problem, but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre noted in a tweet that there’s no evidence of a cyberattack.
