Flights in the US have been disrupted by a failure of a key communications system operated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which initially grounded all domestic services to deal with the problem.
The FAA said its Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system, which alerts pilots to potential hazards and restrictions during their flights, had suffered an overnight outage on Wednesday (11 January).
As it worked to fully restore the system, the FAA ordered airlines to “pause all domestic departures until 9am Eastern Time to allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information”.
The regulator later lifted the ground stop on flights, allowing departures to resume from 9am Eastern Time. Services from Newark Liberty International and Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airports were allowed to resume earlier due to traffic congestion in those areas.
“Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the US following an overnight outage to the Notice to Air Missions system that provides safety info to flight crews,” said the FAA.
“The ground stop has been lifted. We continue to look into the cause of the initial problem.”
There are around 19,600 domestic flights scheduled to depart US airports on Wednesday (11 January), according to aviation data firm Cirium.
American Airlines said earlier in a tweet: “An FAA outage is impacting all flights including all carriers. We sincerely appreciate your patience as they work to resolve this.”
Meanwhile United Airlines said it had “temporarily delayed” all domestic flights on Wednesday morning as it waited for an update from the FAA.
The impact on transatlantic flights between Europe and the US was initially unclear, although departure data from major European hubs suggested there was little impact to flights on Wednesday. BTN Europe will update the situation as more information becomes available.
John Grant, chief analyst at aviation data company OAG, said: “The likely consequence of this is obviously a series of delays and cancellations across the US with perhaps some impact into longer-haul international flights - although I see BA appear to be operating an on-time schedule to JFK this morning.
“Such issues are not uncommon and probably happen three or four times a year around the world. It’s also a moot point as to if an aircraft can still operate without NOTAMs being issued, some airlines and operators are saying it is not essential but at the same time it’s a brave carrier that ignores or flies without NOTAMs.”