The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is currently experiencing a systems outage that’s causing nationwide grounding of domestic flight operations.
While the agency is trying to fix the issue as quickly as possible, the massive disruptions will likely stretch through the entire day and affect hundreds of thousands of passengers.
Right now more than 1,100 flights have already been affected though as of latest news these were only domestic flights and international operations were able to be processed as normal.
NBC just reported that the FAA is providing updates on progress throughout the day.
Flights across the United States were affected Wednesday morning after the Federal Aviation Administration said it experienced a computer outage.
All flights in the U.S. were grounded following the incident, a source with knowledge of the situation told NBC News.
The FAA said in a notice on its website that its Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system had “failed” Wednesday morning. A NOTAM is a notice containing information essential to workers involved in flight operations.
“Technicians are currently working to restore the system and there is no estimate for restoration of service at this time,” it said.
More than 1,160 flights within, into and out of the U.S. were delayed as of around 7 a.m. Wednesday morning, according to online flight tracker FlightAware. Just under 100 flights were listed as cancelled.
“Operations across the National Airspace System are affected,” the FAA said in a statement.
“The FAA is working to restore its Notice to Air Missions System. We are performing final validation checks and repopulating the system now,” it said.
This is the lastest update of the FAA’s Twitter account:
Cleared Update No. 2 for all stakeholders: ⁰⁰The FAA is still working to fully restore the Notice to Air Missions system following an outage. ⁰⁰While some functions are beginning to come back on line, National Airspace System operations remain limited.
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023
American Airlines kept it brief and is just replying to customer Tweets:
An FAA outage is impacting all flights including all carriers. We sincerely appreciate your patience as they work to resolve this.
— americanair (@AmericanAir) January 11, 2023
A bit more info from United:
— United Airlines (@united) January 11, 2023
Passengers can of course get a refund for canceled flights and receive rebooking assistance whenever possible but keep in mind that counters and hotlines will be jammed and availability to rebook is scarce.
Conclusion
An FAA system issue is currently causing massive problems with domestic flight operations in the U.S. and passengers can’t take off for the time being.
We suggest passengers who have a flight today to consult both airline and airport status updates to see if their plans will go ahead. Expect chaos at the airport and possibly think twice if flying today is really necessary. If you have a confirmed seat later in the day you’ll probably be ok.
