FAA NOTAM technology failed, canceling thousands of flights

Planes were grounded for hours across the United States on Wednesday, leading to thousands of canceled and delayed flights after a government system used to provide pilots with safety and other information which was destroyed in one night.

The White House initially said there was no evidence of a cyberattack behind the outage that disrupted travel plans for millions of passengers. President Joe Biden said Wednesday morning that he ordered the Department of Transportation to investigate.

The outage shows how dependent the world’s largest economy is on air travel, and how much air travel depends on an antiquated computer system to generate alerts called NOTAMs — or Notices to Air Missions — of pilots and others.

Before a flight takes off, pilots and aircraft dispatchers must review announcements, which include information about weather, runway closures or construction and other information that could affect the flight. The system was previously telephone-based, with pilots calling dedicated flight service stations for information, but has moved online.

The NOTAM system went down late Tuesday and wasn’t fixed until 9 a.m. Eastern Wednesday, leading to about 1,200 flight cancellations and more than 7,800 delays by early afternoon Eastern Coast, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

Although the Federal Aviation Administration lifted the order that grounded planes, the chaos is expected to continue. More than 21,000 flights are scheduled to depart the US Wednesday, mostly domestic flights, and about 1,840 international flights are expected to depart the US, according to aviation data firm Cirium.

Airports in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta saw between 30% and 40% of flights delayed.

“There was an issue with the system overnight that led to a ground stop because of the way the safety information was working in the system,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said at a press conference. “That was resolved, allowing the ground to be lifted at 9 o’clock this morning, but throughout the day we will see the effects of the flow in the system.”

Buttigieg said his agency is now looking to understand what caused the NOTAM system to go down.

Longtime aviation insiders cannot recall an outage of such magnitude due to technological disruption. Some have compared it to the nationwide air shutdown following the terrorist attacks of September 2001.

“From time to time there are local issues here or there, but this is very important historically,” said Tim Campbell, a former senior vice president of air operations at American Airlines and now a consultant in Minneapolis.

Campbell said the concern has long been about the FAA’s technology, and not just the NOTAM system.

“Most of their systems are old mainframe systems that are generally reliable but they are outdated,” he said.

John Cox, a former airline pilot and aviation safety expert, said there had been talk in the aviation industry for years about trying to modernize the NOTAM system, but he didn’t know the age of the servers. used by the FAA.

“I have been flying for 53 years. I’ve never heard of the system going down like this,” Cox said. “So something strange happened.”

According to FAA advisories, the NOTAM system failed at 8:28 pm Eastern on Tuesday preventing new or revised notices from being distributed to pilots. The FAA turned to a telephone hotline to keep departures flying through the night, but as traffic decreased during the day it overwhelmed the telephone backup system.

The FAA ordered all departing flights grounded early Wednesday morning, affecting all passenger and shipping flights.

Some medical flights could get clearance and the outage did not affect any military operations or movements.

Flights for the US military’s Air Mobility Command were not affected.

Biden said Wednesday morning that Buttigieg had informed him.

“I just talked to Buttigieg. They don’t know what the reason is. But I was on the phone with him for about 10 minutes,” Biden said. “I told him to report to me immediately if they find out.

Buttigieg acknowledged the delays and flight cancellations due to the loss, but stressed that “the main thing I want everyone to understand is that every step of the way safety will be our north star, as always.”

“We are now pivoting to focus on understanding the root causes of the issue,” he said.

Passengers are struggling to arrange flights. Many said they had trouble finding information on how long the delays would be.

“There was a lot of frustration, a lot of confusion,” said Ryan Ososki, who tried to fly from Washington, DC, to California for a work conference. “I came back an hour and a half late (and) it’s still not clear if I should board or not because I already missed my connecting flight.”

Julia Macpherson was in a United Airlines flight from Sydney to Los Angeles on Wednesday when he learned of possible delays.

“While I was in the air, I received word from my friend who was also traveling abroad that there was a power outage,” said Macpherson, who returned to Florida from Hobart, Tasmania. When he landed in Los Angeles, he still had a connection in Denver on his flight to Jacksonville, Florida.

He said there were no in-flight announcements about the FAA issue.

Macpherson said he has already experienced delays in his flights because his original flight from Melbourne to San Francisco was canceled and he rebooked a flight from Sydney to Los Angeles.

Similar stories emerged in Chicago, Washington, Atlanta and other major US airports.

European flights to the US appear to be unaffected. Carriers from Ireland’s Aer Lingus to Germany’s Lufthansa said there would be no impact on their schedules.

It’s the latest headache for U.S. travelers facing flight cancellations over the holidays amid winter storms and disruptions to staffing technology. Southwest Airlines. They also run into long lines, lost luggage, and summer cancellations and delays as travel demand rebounds from the COVID-19 pandemic and runs into staff reductions at airports and airlines. US and Europe.

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Koenig reported from Dallas and Chapman reported from New York. AP writers Zeke Miller and Tara Copp in Washington, DC, Kelvin Chan in London, Tom Krisher in Detroit and Freida Frisaro in Miami contributed to this report.



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