Passengers wait for the resumption of flights at O’Hare International Airport after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures due to a system outage, in Chicago, Illinois, US, on Jan. 11, 2023. (REUTERS)
A US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) system outage has led to delays at airports across the country due to “ground stops,” Austin-Bergstrom International Airport said on Wednesday.
The FAA said that it was working to restore a system that alerts pilots to hazards and changes to airport facilities and procedures that had stopped processing updated information.
“The FAA is still working to fully restore the Notice to Air Missions (Notam) system following an outage. While some functions are beginning to come back on line, National Airspace System operations remain limited,” it said on Twitter.
More than 760 flights were delayed within, into, or out of the United States as of Wednesday 6:30 a.m. ET, flight tracking website FlightAware showed, without citing the reasons.
An additional 91 flights within, into or out of the United States were also canceled.
A ground stop is an air traffic control measure that slows or halts aircraft at a given airport.
‘Failed’
United Airlines said it had temporarily delayed all domestic flights and it would issue an update when it learned more from the FAA.
“Arriving and departing passengers can expect delays this morning and throughout the day,” Austin-Bergstrom International Airport said on Twitter.
In an earlier advisory on its website, the FAA said its NOTAM system had “failed”, although NOTAMs issued before the outage were still viewable.
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.
Information can go up to 200 pages for long-haul international flights and may include items such as runway closures, bird hazard warnings, and construction obstacles.
Later, as US flights slowly began to resume departures after the FAA scrambled to fix the outage, President Joe Biden ordered an investigation.
On Twitter, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden had been briefed on the situation and that there was no evidence of a cyber-attack at this point.