Flights across the United States were gradually resuming on Wednesday morning after an hours-long pause sparked by a Federal Aviation Administration system failure.
“Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the U.S. following an overnight outage to the Notice to Air Missions system that provides safety info to flight crews,” the FAA said just before 9 a.m. ET. “The ground stop has been lifted. We continue to look into the cause of the initial problem.”
Update 5: Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the U.S. 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
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023
The FAA previously said just after 7 a.m. Wednesday morning that it was “still working to fully restore the Notice to Air Missions system following an outage” and that a pause was in place until 9 a.m. “to allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a tweet that President Biden had been briefed on the system outage by Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
“There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the President directed DOT to conduct a full investigation into the causes,” she said. “The FAA will provide regular updates.”
Biden confirmed earlier on Wednesday that he had spoken with Buttigieg and told reporters that aircraft “can still land safely, just not take off right now.”
“They don’t know what the cause of it is, they expect in a couple of hours they’ll have a good sense of what caused it and will respond at that time,” he said.
More than 2,500 flights within, into and out of the United States were delayed as a result of the system failure, according to FlightAware.
Buttigieg said on Twitter that the F.A.A. “is working to resolve this issue swiftly and safely so that air traffic can resume normal operations.”
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.
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) January 11, 2023
American Airlines said in a statement that the system affected provides “critical flight safety operation information” and that it is “closely monitoring the situation, which impacts all airlines, and working with the FAA to minimize disruption to our operation and customers.”