U.S. computer outage leads to hundreds of flight delays, cancellations

The Federal Aviation Administration has halted flights in the US after a computer outage caused thousands of delays and hundreds of cancellations to rush through systems at airports nationwide.

Some flights to US destinations at Canadian airport departures showed delays ranging from 30 minutes to more than an hour as a result, with some cancellations. Major Canadian airports are advising travelers with U.S. routes to check with their airlines on flight status before arriving at the airport.

The blackout showed the world how dependent the largest economy is on air travel, and how dependent air travel is on an antiquated FAA computer system called the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system.

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

Campbell said he has long been concerned about FAA technology, and not just the NOTAM system.

“Many of these systems are old mainframe systems that are generally reliable but are outdated,” he said.

The NOTAM system broke down late Tuesday, causing more than 1,000 flight cancellations and 7,000 flight delays by midday Wednesday, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware. Airports in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta saw between 30 percent and 40 percent of flights delayed.

“We will see a ripple effect from that, late this morning through the system during the day,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in an interview on CNN. “Now we need to understand how this can happen in the first place. What is the usual redundancy that will end from being disruptive does not end from being disruptive this time.”

The reason is not yet clear

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said early Wednesday that US President Joe Biden had been briefed on the situation and had directed the Department of Transportation to investigate. There was no direct evidence that the outage was caused by a cyberattack, Jean-Pierre said.

Before starting a flight, pilots are required to consult NOTAMs, which list potential negative impacts on flights, from runway construction to the potential for icing. The system used to be telephone-based, with pilots calling dedicated flight service stations for the information, but has now moved online.

All aircraft are required to pass through the system, including commercial and military flights.

Breakdowns in the NOTAM system appear to be rare.

“I’ve been flying for 53 years. I’ve never heard of a system going down like this,” said John Cox, a former pilot and now an aviation safety consultant. “So something unusual happened.”

According to FAA advisories, the NOTAM system failed at 8:28 pm ET on Friday, preventing new or revised notices from being distributed to pilots. The FAA resorted to a telephone hotline in an effort to maintain overnight flight departures, but when daytime traffic picked up, it overwhelmed the telephone backup system.

Data from aviation analytics firm Cirium showed that more than 21,400 flights were scheduled to depart from US airports on Wednesday. The flight’s carrying capacity is close to 2.9 million passengers, although it is unclear how many tickets were sold.

Democrat Maria Cantwell, chairwoman of the US Senate trade committee:

It’s the latest headache for North American travelers, who faced holiday flight cancellations amid the winter storm as well as unrelated complications for Sunwing Airlines and Southwest Airlines passengers in late December.

Members of the House of Commons transport, infrastructure and communities committee will hold a full hearing on Thursday related to the ordeal. Executives from Sunwing, Air Canada and WestJet are scheduled to appear as are representatives from Transport Canada and executives from several Canadian airports.