US flight delays, cancellations snowball after FAA system outage

Orlando airport fairly quiet amid grounding of U.S. flights

Flights were grounded for several hours across the U.S. following a computer outage. FOX 35 Orlando’s Nestor Mato joined LiveNOW from FOX’s Josh Breslow from Orlando International Airport.

U.S. departing flights were temporarily grounded on Wednesday morning due to a nationwide Federal Aviation Administration system outage, resulting in a cascade of more delays and cancellations for travelers. 

The widespread FAA outage impacted NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions), a system that sends out critical information to pilots and other flight operations personnel about potential hazards along a route. The alerts span from mundane information about construction at airports to urgent flight restrictions or broken equipment.

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

The FAA ordered all departing flights grounded early Wednesday morning and lifted the ground stop shortly before 9 a.m. ET. 

"Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the U.S. following an overnight outage to the Notice to Air Missions system that provides safety info to flight crews," the FAA said. "We continue to look into the cause of the initial problem," the agency added.

But by around 10 a.m., nearly 5,000 flights within, into, and out of the U.S. were delayed, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. Almost 900 flights were listed as cancelled. FAA reports nationwide system outage, impacting flights

The Federal Aviation Administration reported a nationwide outage impacting NOTAM, appearing to impact several flights across the United States, on Jan. 11, 2023.

The White House initially said that there was no evidence of a cyberattack behind the outage. President Joe Biden said Wednesday morning that he had directed the Department of Transportation to investigate.

Longtime aviation insiders could not recall an outage of such magnitude caused by a technology breakdown. Some compared it to the nationwide shutdown of airspace after the terror attacks of September 2001.

"Periodically there have been local issues here or there, but this is pretty significant historically," said Tim Campbell, a former senior vice president of air operations at American Airlines and now a consultant in Minneapolis.

Campbell said there has long been concern about the Federal Aviation Administration’s technology, and not just the NOTAM system.

"So much of their systems are old mainframe systems that are generally reliable but they are out of date," he said.

Passengers are seen in Romulus, Michigan, United States on December 29, 2022. (Photo by Adam J. Dewey/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Before leaving the White House to accompany his wife to a medical procedure at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Biden spoke to reporters about the FAA issue. He said he had just been briefed by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who told him they still had not identified what went wrong.

"I just spoke to Buttigieg. They don’t know what the cause is. But I was on the phone with him about 10 minutes," Biden said. "I told him to report directly to me when they find out. Air traffic can still land safely, just not take off right now. We don’t know what the cause of it is."

Buttigieg said in a tweet that he is in touch with the FAA and monitoring the situation.

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

Some medical flights could get clearance and the outage did not impact any military operations or mobility. Flights for the U.S. military’s Air Mobility Command, were not affected.

United Airlines told FOX Television Stations that it had temporarily delayed all domestic flights and would issue an update once it learned more from the FAA. American Airlines said that it was closely monitoring the situation.

European flights into the U.S. appeared to be largely unaffected.

Irish carrier Aer Lingus said services to the U.S. continue, and Dublin Airport’s website showed that its flights to Newark, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles were running on schedule.

"Aer Lingus plan to operate all transatlantic flights as scheduled today," the carrier said in a prepared statement. "We will continue to monitor but we do not anticipate any disruption to our services arising from the technical issue in the United States."

Throughout the early morning hours, many passengers on Twitter began reporting that their flights had been grounded as officials worked to resolve the issue. 

"Anyone else stranded? Our @united (pilot) says there is a nation wide outage of FAA @FAANews computer systems," one Twitter user wrote.

"@AmericanAir informed us that all flights flying to the USA are grounded until the FAA system is fixed," another questioned. "@FAANews, any updates? Currently in Paris, Thanks."

The FAA outage was just the latest headache for travelers in the U.S. who faced flight cancellations over the holidays amid winter storms and a breakdown with staffing technology at Southwest Airlines. They also ran into long lines, lost baggage, and cancellations and delays over the summer as travel demand roared back from the COVID-19 pandemic and ran into staffing cutbacks at airports and airlines in the U.S. and Europe.

RELATED: After Southwest meltdown, experts issue tips on avoiding future airport issues

This story was reported from Cincinnati. The Associated Press contributed.