The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a halt to all domestic flight departures today after the system providing pilots with pre-flight safety notices went offline. The FAA said in a statement it had ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9 am Eastern Time.
“We are performing final validation checks and repopulating the system now,” an earlier FAA statement said according to a report by CNN. “Operations across the National Airspace System are affected. We will provide frequent updates as we make progress.”
So far, 1,366 flights have been delayed within, into, or out of the US, flight tracking website FlightAware showed. Another 108 were canceled according to ZeroHedge.
The FAA wrote in an advisory update that its NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system had “failed.” The aviation agency provided no immediate estimate for when it would return online. The association representing US airlines, Airlines for America says the outage is “causing significant operational delays.”
“THE FAA is experiencing an outage that is impacting the update of NOTAMS. All flights are unable to be released at this time,” the FAA said in a statement. In a statement to NBC News, the FAA said, “Operations across the National Airspace System are affected.”
So far, 1,162 flights have been delayed within, into, or out of the US, flight tracking website FlightAware showed. Another 94 were canceled.
There have been several instances of flights being canceled or delayed over the past few years.
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American Airlines Cancels More Than 2,000 Flight For “Weather” & Staffing ShortagesAccording to CNN, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweeted, ” 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.”
This story is still developing, but the system outage appears to be widespread and has already caused a lot of disruption.