In a morning of chaos, all flights across the U.S. have been grounded due to a Federal Aviation Administration system failure on Wednesday morning.
The NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system—which provides essential aviation information such as airspace obstacles and closed runways to pilots and other airport personnel—stopped processing information in the early hours of Wednesday morning. As a result the FAA ordered airlines to pause all U.S. domestic departures until 9am ET, causing. The flight cancellations has caused widespread disruption.
Addressing the technical problem, the transportation agency tweeted: “The FAA is still working to fully restore the Notice to Air Missions system following an outage.”
The post continued: “The FAA has ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9 a.m. Eastern Time to allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information.”
There is currently no known estimated time or restoration, according to aviation analyst Alex Macheras, but flights will not resume until the issue is resolved, which will potentially have global impact.
Angry passengers facing delays and cancellations took to social media to complain.
Airports are advising passengers to check in with their airline for up to date information on their journey.