The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded all planes in the country following a computer failure. This is the first time that this has happened since September 11.
Wednesday morning, the FAA released a statement saying, “There was an outage at the FAA that would impact the updating of NOTAMS. ”
FAA NOTAMS refers to “a notice that contains essential information for personnel involved in flight operations but is not sufficiently advanced to be made public through other means.” It is a description of the abnormal status of a National Airspace System, (NAS), rather than its normal status.
FAA OUTAGE ✈️ 🚨
An @FAANews advisory says a system failure is impacting flights nationwide. Reports coming in that flights are grounded everywhere.
Techs are working to restore the system but there’s no timeframe for when that could happen. @WFTV pic.twitter.com/F6rqIm163s
— Alexa Lorenzo (@ALorenzoTV) January 11, 2023
At 7:19 AM, the FAA tweeted that they had ordered airlines to suspend domestic flights until 9 AM Eastern Time in order to “validate the integrity of flight information.”
The agency kept people updated via Twitter throughout the morning.
Update 3: The FAA is still working to fully restore the Notice to Air Missions system following an outage.⁰⁰The FAA has ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9 a.m. Eastern Time to allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information.
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023
All flights currently in the sky are safe to land. Pilots check the NOTAM system before they fly. A Notice to Air Missions alerts pilots about closed runways, equipment outages, and other potential hazards along a flight route or at a location that could affect the flight.
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023
The FAA posted via Twitter that the ground stop was lifted at 8:50 am. Normal air traffic operations across the U.S. have resumed slowly after an overnight disruption to the Notice to Air Missions (which provides safety information to flight crews),
White House spokeswoman Katherine Jean-Pierre tweeted that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had informed the president about the situation. Jean-Pierre said, “There is no evidence of hacker attacks at this time. ”
The President has been briefed by the Secretary of Transportation this morning 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.
— Karine Jean-Pierre (@PressSec) January 11, 2023
Mayor Pete announced just before 9:15 AM that the system had been fully restored. He also said that he would initiate an after-action procedure, which corporate-speak refers to “we’ll make great shows of trying to solve this problem.”
FAA has determined that the safety system affected by the overnight outage is fully restored, and the nationwide ground stop will be lifted effective immediately. I have directed an after-action process to determine root causes and recommend next steps.
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) January 11, 2023
The FAA system failure comes on the heels of widespread flight cancelations by Southwest and other airlines over the holidays that stranded thousands of passengers.
