More than 11,300 flights in the US were delayed or cancelled on Wednesday (11 January) as domestic traffic was grounded for several hours following a nationwide outage of the Federal Aviation Administration's Notice to Air Missions system, which alerts pilots to potential hazards.
In a statement the FAA said that “preliminary work has traced the outage to a damaged database file” and that at this time there is “no evidence of a cyberattack”.
The agency added that it is “working diligently to further pinpoint the causes of this issue and take all needed steps to prevent this kind of disruption from happening again”.
Major US carriers such as Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines expect to resume normal operations on Thursday, according to Reuters. However, travel industry professionals have raised concerns the disruption could hinder business travel recovery.
"Travel disruption of any sort can have a broad and tremendous impact, not only on travellers, but also on the travel companies who serve them," Global Business Travel Association CEO Suzanne Neufang told BTN Europe’s sister publication BTN. "Business travel disruption comes with the increased risk of economic impact – both regionally and globally – when the ability to conduct business and meet with clients and teams is significantly affected."
Henry Harteveldt, president and travel industry analyst for Atmosphere Research Group said the FAA disruption “does nothing to make people want to travel more for business”.
"If you've been affected by various disruptions we've seen happen, whether because of a pilot shortage, weather or traffic control centre issues, at some point you will say, 'I will do everything I can to travel less for business’”, he added.
In the meantime, major carriers have offered waivers, added flexibility or refunds to affected travellers.
United Airlines was the first carrier to announce it created a travel waiver for customers who needed to change plans, including refunds for those who no longer wanted to travel.
American Airlines is providing additional flexibility to rebook travel without any additional fees. Delta Air Lines offered a "fare difference waiver" to all Delta and Delta Connection flights on Wednesday and "will give customers additional flexibility to change their flights, even if their flight isn't delayed or cancelled," according to the carrier.
Southwest Airlines is allowing customers to rebook in the original class of service or to travel on standby within 14 days of the original date of travel between the original city-pairs and in accordance with Southwest's accommodation procedures, without paying additional charges.