Flights in the United States were slowly beginning to resume departures and a ground stoppage was lifted after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) scrambled to fix a system glitch that had forced all flights out of the country to halt.
The cause of the problem, which has delayed thousands of flights in the United States, was unclear, but US authorities said they had so far found no evidence of a cyberattack.
“Normal air traffic operations are gradually resuming in the United States following an overnight outage of the Notice to Air Missions system that provides safety information to flight crews. The ground stop was lifted. We are still investigating the cause of the initial problemthe FAA said in a Tweet.
More than 4,300 flights have been delayed and 700 cancelled, as authorities said it will take hours to recover from the disruption in flights.
The FAA It had previously ordered airlines to halt all domestic departures after its pilot alert system failed and the agency had to perform a hard reset around 0200 (0700 GMT), authorities said.
The FAA It said shortly before 8:30 a.m. local time that departures were resuming at Newark and Atlanta airports.
It is expected that the FAA implement a ground delay program to address the backlog of flights held for hours. Flights already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations during the lockdown.
President Joe Biden directed the Department of Transportation to investigate the outage, saying the cause of the failure was unknown at this time. Asked if a cyberattack was behind the outage, Biden told reporters at the White House: “We do not know”.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg promised “an after action process to determine root causes and recommend next steps”.
The FAA It said it was working to restore the Notice to Air Missions system that alerts pilots to hazards and changes to airport facilities and procedures that had stopped processing updated information.
A total of 4,314 US flights were delayed as of 0904 Eastern Time (1404 GMT), the FlightAware flight tracking website showed. Another 737 were written off.
Need for modernization
united said it had resumed operations. However, the Chicago-based airline warned that customers could continue to see some delays and cancellations.
“America’s transportation network is in desperate need of significant improvements… We call on federal lawmakers to modernize our vital air travel infrastructure“, said Geoff Freemanpresident and CEO of the United States Travel Association, a group representing airlines, hotels, car rental companies and theme parks.
The interruption of the system FAA It comes weeks after an operational collapse at Southwest late last year that left thousands of passengers stranded. A severe winter storm just before Christmas, coupled with the Texas-based airline’s outdated technology, led to more than 16,000 flight cancellations last month.
The DOT, the parent agency of the FAA, has strongly criticized Southwest’s failures and has pressured the airline to compensate passengers for missed flights and other related costs. There is no legal requirement that the FAA must compensate passengers for flight delays caused by agency computer problems.
essential information
A NOTAM is a notice that contains essential information for personnel related to flight operations, but which is not known sufficiently in advance to be published by other means.
The information can be up to 200 pages long for long-haul international flights and can include items such as runway closures, bird warnings, and construction obstacles.
United Airlines said it had temporarily delayed all domestic flights and would issue an update when it learned more from the FAA.
Germany’s Lufthansa and Air France said they would continue to operate flights to and from the United States, while the French airline said it was monitoring the situation.
The operator of Paris’ international airports, Paris Charles de Gaulle airport and Orly airport, said it expects flight delays.
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport said on Twitter that ground stops across the country were causing delays. A ground stop is an air traffic control measure that slows or stops an aircraft at a specified airport.
In an earlier notice on its website, the FAA said that its NOTAM system had “failed”, although the NOTAMs issued before the interruption could still be seen. Earlier this month, a problem with a different airline’s computer control system delayed dozens of flights in Florida.
A total of 21,464 flights are scheduled to depart from US airports on Wednesday with a capacity of nearly 2.9 million passengers, according to Cirium data. American Airlines has the most departures from U.S. airports with 4,819 scheduled flights, followed by Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines, the Cirium data showed.
Source: Reuters
Source: Gestion
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