Planes turn back for airports as all flights in US grounded, tracker shows
Hundreds of flights have been delayed across the US, with dozens more cancelled, after a computer glitch.
A key Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) system has suffered a “major failure”, which engineers are frantically trying to resolve.
The fault lies with the NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system, which keeps pilots and other airport staff updated about aviation hazards and airport facilities.
It stopped processing information this morning; while the FAA said there was no nationwide ground stop, “operations across the National Airspace System are affected.”
The US government transport agency said: “The FAA is working to restore its Notice to Air Missions System. We are performing final validation checks and repopulating the system now,” said a spokesperson for the FAA.”
It added: “We will provide frequent updates as we make progress.”
At least 400 flights have been delayed into, out of or across the US as of 5.31am ET, according to FlightAware.
US disruption ‘will soon be felt elsewhere across the world’, says analyst
Aviation analyst Alex Macheras has told The Independent: “NOTAMs are essential for the safe continuation of global air travel.
“These essential notices and directives ultimately keep the world’s aviation sector, specifically flight crew and all personnel concerned with flight operations, informed and up to speed with latest air travel related directives, operational updates, security, weather and warnings.
“With a system failure affecting NOTAMs, operations will be disrupted almost immediately and this will soon be felt elsewhere across the world, including for flights waiting to depart to the US.”
On Twitter Mr Macheras predicted: “Flights will be unable to resume until [the system failure is] resolved.”
Lucy Thackray11 January 2023 12:33
FAA is ‘working swiftly’, says Buttigieg
The US Secretary for Transportation Pete Buttigieg has said the FAA is “working to resolve this issue swiftly”, as hundreds of flights remain grounded and many more disrupted by the system outage.
“I have been in touch with FAA this morning about an outage affecting a key system for providing safety information to pilots,” tweeted Mr Buttigieg.
“FAA is working to resolve this issue swiftly and safely so that air traffic can resume normal operations, and will continue to provide updates.”
Lucy Thackray11 January 2023 12:26
All domestic departures paused until 9am ET, says FAA
The Federal Aviation Administration has issued an update on the status of their NOTAM system, the failure of which has grounded and delayed flights across the US.
“While some functions are beginning to come back on line, National Airspace System operations remain limited,” said a spokesperson
“The FAA has ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9am Eastern Time [2pm GMT] to allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information.”
Lucy Thackray11 January 2023 12:22
Flights grounded across US following major FAA system outage
Thousands of flights have been grounded across the US after the Federal Aviation Administration’s IT system suffered a “major failure”.
The NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system, which keeps pilots and other airport staff updated about aviation hazards and airport facilities, has stopped processing information as of Wednesday morning.
The FAA said there was no nationwide ground stop, but confirmed the NOTAM system was down, with engineers currently working on the issue.
The FAA describes NOTAM as as system which “indicate[s] the real-time and abnormal status of the NAS (National Air Space) impacting every user”.
Lucy Thackray11 January 2023 12:11
Good afternoon, and welcome to The Independent’s travel liveblog. We’ll be sharing all the latest updates on the system failure that has prompted the delay of hundreds of flights across the US.
Helen Coffey11 January 2023 12:08
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