The Federal Aviation Administration lifted an early-morning order to pause domestic departures and said regular air traffic was starting to resume across the country, after a critical system that alerts pilots and crew to safety advisories and other information for flights went down overnight.
Normal air traffic operations were “resuming gradually across the United States,” the FAA said in its latest update on the issue Wednesday. The resumption followed an overnight outage to its so-called Notice to Air Missions, which provides safety information to flight crews. The agency said it continues to look into the cause of the initial problem.
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Some departures have already restarted at Newark Liberty airport near New York and Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airports, it said.
United Airlines Holdings Inc. said it had resumed operations after the FAA lifted the groundstop, but said customers may continue to see delays and cancellations as the airline works to restore its schedule.
The FAA said in a notice that Wednesday’s nationwide “ground stop” was lifted at 9.07 a.m. Eastern Time, though some departures resumed before that, according to Flightradar24, a tracking provider. International flights headed to the U.S. before the outage continued to their destinations, though some were placed in holding patterns as airports became congested, airline officials said.
Biden administration officials and cybersecurity experts said that the system outage FAA experienced didn’t appear to be the result of a cyberattack, though the White House said an investigation would occur.
“There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Twitter. “The FAA will provide regular updates.”
Problems with the FAA’s Notam system emerged Tuesday night, according to airline and government officials. The FAA took steps to reboot the primary Notam system overnight, these people said.
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The International Air Transport Association, a trade group, said it had kept its airline members informed of updates from the FAA. “We are confident that the FAA is working diligently to restore flight operations that have been impacted,” a spokesman said. “Clearly, these delays are negatively impacting passengers, airline employees and airline schedules.”
Given the large number of flights affected—during a key takeoff time for domestic flights—it wasn’t clear how quickly airlines and airports might be able to clear any backlogged flights. At LaGuardia Airport’s Terminal C in New York, frustrated passengers milled around a departure board as it lit up in red. Around 10% of the flights listed on the board Wednesday were canceled.
Jacqueline Parker, 26 years old, said she didn’t learn that her flight was canceled until she got to the airport. She was supposed to fly to Kansas City at 11:20 a.m. ET on Delta Air Lines.
“This is very annoying,” said the student.
Flight-data specialist FlightAware early Wednesday showed a rising number of delays and cancellations across the U.S. More than 3,500 flights departing or arriving in the U.S. were delayed and a further 500 canceled as of 8:21 a.m. ET.
It wasn’t immediately clear what proportion of those flights were affected by the outage, with weather also a factor. Cirium, an aviation data provider, said there were a total of 21,464 flights scheduled to depart airports in the U.S. on Wednesday. Those flights account for about 2.9 million available seats.
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A White House spokeswoman, in a tweet, said President Biden had been briefed by the secretary of transportation on the system outage. “There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the president directed the agency to conduct a full investigation into the causes. The FAA will provide regular updates,” she tweeted.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that he was in touch with the FAA and that the agency “is working to resolve this issue swiftly and safely so that air traffic can resume normal operations, and will continue to provide updates,” according to a tweet early Wednesday.
The Senate’s transportation committee plans to examine the factors behind Wednesday’s flight-alert system outage at the FAA, according to Sen. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.), who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
U.S. airline shares were higher early Wednesday trading, outpacing the broader market.
The FAA’s Notam system provides aviation personnel information about flight operations that emerge in real time and can’t be publicized in advance by other methods, the air-safety agency has said. A notice might inform pilots, for example, about operational issues that have cropped up at a specific airport, such as a runway closure, or activity in airspace that aviators should be aware of.
The agency has said on its website that it has been working with airlines and industry groups to try to modernize the noticing system to improve how it delivers the alerts to aviation staffers.
The pilot alerts are key before any flight takes off. Notams can run multiple pages and are packed with technical information for pilots, including which approaches they can use at their destination airports, heights at which they can decide to safely land or any taxiways that may be closed.
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Without reading Notams before their flight, pilots aren’t allowed under federal regulators to take off, a former senior FAA official said.
“You can’t go anywhere,” this former official said. “They really don’t have a choice. No captain is leaving.”
