WASHINGTON: Air traffic in
USA was crippled for more than three hours on Wednesday morning after a catastrophic system failure caused nearly 5000 flights to ground.
Flights resumed after 9 a.m. EST (7:30 p.m. IST) when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAAA) announced that an overnight outage of the Aviation Mission Notification system (Note), providing safety information to the crew, has been fixed. But the delay has had a widespread impact across the US and globally with arrivals delayed and missed flights.
The FAA did not explain the exact nature of the incident and the White House said there was no evidence of a cyber attack ‘at this time’, but the incident rocked the global aviation industry, with a focus on the US , accounting for nearly a quarter of all 100,000 daily flights worldwide.
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Flights across US grounded after FAA system failure
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A computer outage at the Federal Aviation Administration has brought flights across the United States to a halt, with hundreds of flight delays rapidly continuing to the system at airports across the country.
The FAA has ordered airlines to suspend all domestic departures until at least 14:30 GMT (7:30 p.m. IST).
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been working to fix an outage in a key pilot notification system called NOTAM, in which passengers are asked to contact airlines to know updates.
Most of the delays are concentrated along the East Coast, but are beginning to spread to the West. Airlines began delaying flights in response to the outage. The FAA said some functions are starting to resume, but “National Airspace System operations remain limited.”
There was no evidence of a cyberattack during the FAA outage that grounded flights around the country and President Joe Biden ordered an investigation.
The pause comes after a large-scale aviation crisis in the United States over the Christmas holiday, when a hurricane brought unusually cold temperatures to much of the country and caused chaos, with thousands of Thousands of flights were delayed or canceled.
The Federal Aviation Administration has lifted a ground stop order for flights across the United States after an early computer shutdown resulted in thousands of rapid system delays at airports around the world. country.
Regular air traffic operations are slowly resuming across the United States on Wednesday following a technical failure in the crew’s safety information system.
Biden told reporters at the White House that he spoke with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and that they will understand in a few hours what caused the blackout.
Air Canada, the foreign airline with the most flights to the US, said its cross-border operations will be affected by Wednesday’s US system outage, but it’s too early. to determine the total impact.
Passengers across the country say their plans have been foiled, with airport staff sometimes knowing no more than passengers.
According to the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization (ATO), it services more than 45,000 flights and 2.9 million airline passengers across more than 29 million square miles of airspace every day.
Flight tracking website FlightAware recorded more than 6000 flights delayed in, into, or out of the United States until 9 a.m. The last time the US grounded all flights was after 9/11 when commercial air traffic was halted for several days.
There has been familiar political controversy with Trumpistas complaining that the US has become a “third world country” and homophobic comments directed at Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who homosexual. The Pentagon said its operations were not affected.
FAA currently has no head, with the President BidenHis candidate to lead the agency, Phillip Washington, languished because lawmakers had not yet scheduled confirmation hearings.
