Flight operations in the United States have resumed after hours of disruption earlier on Wednesday from a computer outage at the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The US FAA is the aviation regulator in the United States. It said on Twitter the issue concerned a key system called Notice to Air Missions System (NOTAM).
The US FAA said, "The FAA is working to restore its Notice to Air Missions System (NOTAM). We are performing final validation checks and reloading the system now. Operations across the National Airspace System are affected...While some functions are beginning to come back on line, National Airspace System operations remain limited."
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The NOTAM is a critical set of information for flying. It's used to relay important information in a timely manner.
"A NOTAM is a notice containing information essential to personnel concerned with flight operations but not known far enough in advance to be publicized by other means. It states the abnormal status of a component of the National Airspace System (NAS) – not the normal status...NOTAMs indicate the real-time and abnormal status of the NAS impacting every user. NOTAMs concern the establishment, condition, or change of any facility, service, procedure or hazard in the NAS," says the US FAA on its website.
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However, the issue was resolved later and flight operation began returning to normal. However, thousands of flights were grounded for hours.
The FAA ordered airlines to delay all domestic departures early Wednesday morning, but lifted the ground stop just before 9 a.m. Eastern after several hours.
"Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the US 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," FAA said in a tweet.
According to FlightAware, a flight tracking company, more than 3,700 flights within, into or out of the US were delayed and more than 600 were cancelled due to the system failure.
President Joe Biden was briefed by Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg on the FAA system outage.
"There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the President directed DOT to conduct a full investigation into the causes. The FAA will provide regular updates," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a tweet.
Transportation Secretary Buttigieg said that he is in touch with the FAA and monitoring the situation.
"I have been in touch with FAA this morning about an outage affecting a key system for providing safety information to pilots. FAA is working to resolve this issue swiftly and safely so that air traffic can resume normal operations, and will continue to provide updates," he said in a tweet.
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(With AP, PTI inputs)
