NEW YORK (AP) — A computer outage at the FAA brought flights to a standstill across the U.S. on Wednesday, with hundreds of delays quickly cascading through the system at airports nationwide.
The FAA ordered most U.S. flights to delay departures until 9 a.m. Eastern, though airlines said they were aware of the situation and had already begun grounding flights. In a tweet, it said departures at Newark Liberty and Atlanta would resume due to air traffic congestion, but it expected other airports to resume after 9.
The FAA said it was working to restore its Notice to Air Missions System, or Notams. It had ordered all airlines to delay departures to give it time to “validate the integrity of flight and safety information.”
It previously tweeted that although some functions were beginning to come back online, National Airspace Operations remained limited.
At 8:30 a.m. Eastern, there were more than 3,700 delayed flights within, into or out of the U.S., according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.
Most delays were concentrated along the East Coast and airlines said that they were aware of the situation and beginning to suspend flights.
“We are performing final validation checks and reloading the system now,” the FAA said. “Operations across the National Airspace System are affected.”
In a tweet, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Transportation Department secretary Pete Buttigieg briefed President Biden about the outage this morning.
“There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the president directed DOT to conduct a full investigation into the causes,” Jean-Pierre wrote.
United Airlines said that it had temporarily delayed all domestic flights and would issue an update once it learned more from the FAA.
Notams used to be available through a hotline, but that was phased out with the internet. The alerts span from mundane information about construction at airports to urgent flight restrictions or broken equipment.
This report was published by the Associated Press and has been updated with Travel Weekly reporting.
