All flights across the United States have been grounded this morning due to an outage in the Federal Aviation Administration’s computer system.
All outbound flights have been grounded until 9 a.m. ET (2 p.m. GMT) as the Federal Aviation Administration works to restore its Notification of Air Tasks (NOTAM) system, which alerts pilots to air traffic on their flight path. potentially dangerous.
It said the delay would “allow the agency to verify the integrity of the flight safety information”.
Some 3,704 flights within, into and out of the U.S. were delayed today, while another 558 were canceled, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.com. Most of the delays are concentrated on the East Coast.
“The FAA is making progress in restoring the air mission notification system following an overnight outage,” the agency said, adding that Newark Liberty and Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airports were hit by air traffic congestion in those areas. Resuming takeoff.
Earlier, it said it was conducting a “final validation check” and reloading the system after “operations of the entire national airspace system” were affected.
“It’s a mess for the US airline industry,” said Sky News correspondent Mark Stone at Ronald Reagan Airport in Virginia.
“As of this morning, we were told there was a malfunction in the NOTAM system, which is part of the air traffic control system. It is critical for flights to be able to take off safely. As a result, the busiest airspace in the world, the airspace over the United States, is nothing like it is today. Opened as it should in the morning.
“Looking at flight tracking sites, it’s clear you can see flights flying around many cities in the US, but none of them are taking off. Passenger chaos, as you can imagine.”
Kennedy International Airport.FILE PHOTO: AP
President Joe Biden’s press secretary, Karin Jean-Pierre, said he had been briefed on the outage.
She said there was no evidence a cyberattack was behind the glitch, “but the president directed [the US Department of Transport] A full investigation into the cause will be conducted.”
Mr Biden earlier told reporters: “The plane can still land safely, it’s just not taking off now. They don’t know what’s causing it and they hope it will be clear in a few hours what’s causing it and there will be a response at that time .”
The president added that he had spoken to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg by phone and told him to “report it directly to me when they find out about it.”
United Airlines said it has temporarily postponed all domestic flights.
Some tweeted that they were stranded due to a power outage, and a passenger at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport said there were no flights to the United States.
A total of 21,464 flights are scheduled to depart from U.S. airports today, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
These flights offer nearly 2.9 million seats.