More than 4,000 flights delayed or cancelled in US after technical glitch

NEW YORK A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) system failure on Wednesday caused thousands of flights across the United States to be grounded, leading to delays at airports.

More than 4,300 flights within, into and out of the United States were delayed before the FAA lifted its ground stop which halted planes at airports at 9am ET (10pm in Singapore), according to FlightAware, a flight tracking service.

At least 2,000 flights were cancelled.

The cause was a system failure that left pilots, airlines and airports without crucial safety information.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said there was no evidence of a cyber attack in the FAA system outage, but that President Joe Biden has ordered an investigation.

There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the President directed DOT (Department of Transportation) to conduct a full investigation into the causes. The FAA will provide regular updates, Ms Jean-Pierre said in a Twitter post.

President Joe Biden said he spoke with Mr Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, and asked him to report back when a cause for the failure was identified.

The FAA said normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the US.

The full extent of the delays was not immediately known, and some flights managed to take off, but the delays were spread across several airlines.

United Airlines said in a statement it temporarily delayed all domestic flights. American Airlines said the situation impacts all airlines.

The FAA said it ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures to allow it to validate the integrity of flight and safety information.

Air Canada, the foreign carrier with the most flights into the United States, said its trans-border operations would be affected by the outage.

Canadas largest carrier said it would put in place a goodwill policy for affected customers to change their travel plans.

The operator of Paris international airports said it had expected flight delays due to the FAA system outage. We have been informed of a technical incident. At this stage, there have been no flight cancellations but some delays are to be expected, a spokesman for Aeroports de Paris (ADP) said.

ADP runs Paris Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports.

Several flights from Madrid airport to the US were also delayed, information released on the website of Aena, which operates the airport, showed. People wait at Denver International Airport after flights were grounded due to an FAA system outage on Jan 11, 2023. PHOTO: REUTERS Flights by a range of operators were showing as delayed by up to several hours to Dallas-Fort Worth, Miami, and New York, according to the website.

The FAA had been working to restore a system known as the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) that alerts pilots to hazards and changes to airport facilities and procedures that stopped processing updated information.

A NOTAM is a notice containing information essential to personnel concerned with flight operations, but not known far enough in advance to be publicised by other means.

Information can go up to 200 pages for long-haul international flights and may include items such as runway closures, bird hazard warnings and construction obstacles.

Senate commerce committee chair Maria Cantwell said the panel planned to review the cause of the outage.

We will be looking into what caused this outage and how redundancy plays a role in preventing future outages. The public needs a resilient air transportation system, Ms Cantwell said. Embed Twitter Tweet URL The new disruptions follow closely on a December operations meltdown at Southwest Airlines that forced the carrier to cancel more than 16,700 flights and drove the airline to a fourth-quarter loss.

A total of 21,464 flights are scheduled to depart airports in the US on Wednesday with a carrying capacity of nearly 2.9 million passengers, data from Cirium shows. REUTERS, NYTIMES More On This Topic Manila airport scrambles to restore normality after power cut; about 65,000 passengers affected 'Travel insanity': US passengers stranded by winter storm