An overnight computer outage at the Federal Aviation Administration disrupted traveler plans and delayed thousands of flights on Wednesday.
The FAA suspended all flights from the United States past 7 a.m. Eastern time after a system called NOTAM, which provides pilots with safety and other information, malfunctioned. The FAA restored the system shortly before 9:00 a.m. when flights were allowed to resume.
“Normal air traffic control is gradually resuming,” the agency said. murmured At the time.
Yet the confusion continued. By Wednesday evening, more than 2,800 U.S. flights had been canceled and more than 9,700 delayed, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware. I’m late.
In a statement Wednesday night, the FAA said preliminary investigation found a “corrupted database file” was the cause of the outage, but “has found no evidence of a cyberattack.”
“The FAA is working diligently to further identify the cause of this issue and take all necessary steps to prevent this type of disruption from happening again,” the agency added.
Transportation Secretary Peter Buttigieg murmured The FAA is conducting a “system review” at his direction to prevent another similar outage.
Communication failure
The shutdown traces back to a communication system failure called Notam, or notice to air missions. Before a flight takes off, pilots and airline dispatchers should review notices containing details about weather, runway closures or construction, and other information that may affect the flight. The system is separate from air traffic control but is still considered a “critical safety system,” White House spokeswoman Carine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday.
The FAA advisory said the system failed Tuesday night when it stopped accepting new or updated information. The agency switched to using phone lines for nighttime updates, but stopped when daytime traffic increased, overwhelming the phone system.
The suspension did not affect military flights, which have their own notification system, and some medical flights were cleared.
“Due to the way safety information is routed through the system, we had problems with the system during the night, leading to a ground stop,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said at a press conference. The problem was quickly fixed, but he cautioned travelers to expect to see “system-wide ripple effects”.
annoyed passenger
Passengers hurriedly rearranged their trips. Many said they had a hard time knowing how long the delay would last.
“There’s a lot of frustration and confusion,” said Ryan Ossoski, who was about to fly from Washington DC to California for the conference. “I came back an hour and a half late (and) missed my connecting flight, so I’m still not sure if I should board.”
Julia McPherson was on a United flight from Sydney to Los Angeles when she learned of the potential delay.
“I was in the air when a friend, who was also traveling abroad, told me there was a power outage,” said McPherson, who returned to Florida from Hobart, Tasmania. After she landed in Los Angeles, she still had connections with Denver as she was on her way to Jacksonville, Florida.
She said there were no in-flight announcements about the FAA issue.
Cause still unknown
As of Wednesday afternoon, no clear cause for the system failure has been identified.
“There is no evidence that this outage was caused by a cyberattack,” Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday afternoon, adding that the Department of Transportation will investigate the outage.
Lawmakers promised further investigations. Washington Democrat Maria Cantwell, who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said the committee will investigate the FAA’s reauthorization bill, which is enacted every five years.
Rep. Sam Graves, the incoming chairman of the House Transportation Infrastructure Committee, said the incident “highlights a major vulnerability in the air transportation system.”
In a statement, the Missouri Republican said, “There are many questions about what happened today. The FAA expects to provide lawmakers with a full explanation as soon as we have more details.” is an issue and I plan to write a supervisory letter with my colleagues to see who is responsible and how we will prevent this in the future.”
Wednesday’s breakdown was the latest headache for US travelers in the face of weather-related Cancellation of flights on vacation and High-level breakdown for Southwest Airlines.
— Kathryn Krupnik of CBS News and Associated Press contributed to the report.
