What you need to know about the FAA computer outage
- Normal air traffic operations were resuming across the U.S. on Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration said, after an overnight computer outage grounded thousands of flights.
- The FAA said its Notice to Air Missions system, or NOTAM, which contains information essential to workers involved in flight operation, had "failed."
- A corrupted and damaged database file in the system was blamed for the stoppage, the FAA said.
- More than 1,300 flights were canceled Wednesday and 10,000 were delayed Wednesday.
Over 1,300 cancellations, 10,000 delays in U.S. Wednesday
There were 1,343 flights canceled within, into or leaving the U.S. on Wednesday, the day a computer outage halted all departures in the country.
The number of delayed flights in the U.S. on Wednesday was 10,060, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.
New York’s LaGuardia Airport had 50% of its departing plans delayed, according to the website. Denver International had 60% of its departing flights delayed.
The Federal Aviation Administration said a damaged database file was found as it investigated the cause of the outage to its Notice to Air Missions system. “There is no evidence of a cyber attack,” the agency said.
Aviation warning system that crashed was already a pain for pilots
The U.S. aviation warning system that crashed for more than an hour Wednesday traces its origins to ocean-faring ships and has been under continuous reforms for years, experts say.
At least one aviation industry group has called for it to be replaced altogether.
The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights blaming an unspecified failure in the Notice to Air Missions system. NOTAM issues a near-constant stream of acronyms and abbreviations to alert pilots to a host of potential dangers, from parachuters and bad weather to legal airspace restrictions and flocks of birds.
By Wednesday evening, the agency had pinpointed the problem as a damaged database file, and there is no evidence of a cyberattack, it said.
Regardless of the cause, the NOTAM system has long been a source of frustration for pilots and others in the aviation industry, who say it overloads them with information that’s irrelevant to their flights and makes it difficult to identify actually useful information.
More than 1,300 flights still delayed across U.S.
More than 1,300 flights were delayed and nearly 100 were canceled Wednesday afternoon after a corrupted file knocked out a government system that provides pilots with critical information, halting flights across the country overnight.
Flights resumed Wednesday morning. According to the tracking site FlightAware, Denver International Airport led the country with delays, at 111.
Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina was second, with 95.
The average departure and arrival delays were under an hour at both airports, according to the site.
Nearly 10,000 flights had been delayed across the country Wednesday, according to the site. More than 1,300 had been canceled.
Corrupted file affected critical FAA system, official says
A corrupted file affected both the primary and backup systems of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Notice to Air Missions system, a senior government official said.
The failure of the critical system prompted a ground halt at airports across the country early Wednesday before passengers slowly began boarding flights again.
It isn’t clear how the file was corrupted. An investigation continues.
Buttigieg: 'No direct indication of any kind of external or nefarious activity,' but not ruling it out
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told NBC News' Andrea Mitchell that "there is no direct indication of any kind of external or nefarious activity, but we are not yet prepared to rule that out."
He added that officials are working "to see exactly what was going on inside the files that were in the system, leading to this irregularity."
"This is an incredibly complex system," Buttigieg said later in the interview. "So glitches or complications happen all the time, but we can’t allow them to ever lead to this level of disruption, and we won’t ever allow them to lead to a safety problem."
The Transportation Department forced airlines to pay out millions of dollars in refunds last year for canceled and delayed flights, but Buttigieg stopped short of agreeing that it should refund travelers after the FAA outage when Mitchell posed the question.
"We’re not for-profit companies selling tickets that the way an airline is," he said. "Our responsibility is to make sure that everybody is safe, and we’re always going to err on the side of safety. ... When there’s an issue on the government side of the house, when there’s an issue in FAA, we’re going to own it, we’re going to understand it, and we’re going to make very clear what’s needed in order to fix it and go after that plan."
Largest pilots union 'encourages patience' as delays mount
The largest pilots union in North America encouraged travelers Wednesday to be patient after the nationwide ground halt on flights as data from the tracking site FlightAware.com showed ongoing delays.
“We are in regular contact with the Federal Aviation Administration and will continue to work with them and airline managements to ensure our aviation system continues to be as safe as possible," the Air Line Pilots Association International said in a statement.
The group represents 67,000 pilots at 40 U.S. and Canadian airlines.
FlightAware showed delays of as many as 48% of flights for Southwest Airlines, 44% for American Airlines and 38% for United Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the American Airlines pilots union said he respected the decision to issue the nationwide stop, as it was most likely necessary to ensure safe travel.
Still, "this shouldn't be happening," said Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association. "This is a learning moment — but we have to get those moments down to a minimum."
This traveler is rushing home to perform plastic surgery
Performing plastic surgery was on the line if Dr. Robert Feczko didn’t make it home to North Carolina.
His ski trip to Colorado ended as his Delta fight from Denver International Airport to Atlanta was delayed two hours. Complicating matters, Feczko, 37, would most likely miss his connecting flight to Raleigh, North Carolina, and push back the final stretch of his trip — a 90-minute drive home to Greenville, North Carolina.
Feczko said that he wanted to feel fresh to perform surgery Thursday morning but that before he left Colorado, he wasn’t sure whether he’d even make it home.
“I’m more concerned about my flight routing through Atlanta,” Feczko said, waiting in line to check his ski equipment. “I’m worried about tomorrow. I have a surgery at 7:30 a.m.”
Canada's air navigation service provider experiencing NOTAM outage
Canada's air navigation service provider, Nav Canada, was experiencing the same computer system outage the FAA did, it tweeted shortly after 12:30 p.m. ET.
"NAV CANADA's Canadian NOTAM entry system is currently experiencing an outage affecting newly issued NOTAMs, and we are working to restore function," the statement read. "We are not currently experiencing any delays related to this outage. We are assessing impacts to our operations and will provide updates as soon as they are available."
Vanessa Adams, a spokesperson for NAV Canada, said in a statement that the outage began at about 10:20 a.m. ET and that power was restored at about 1:15 p.m.
"We are still investigating the root cause of the failure," Adam said. "At this time, we do not believe the cause is related to the FAA outage experienced earlier today."
As of about 3 p.m. ET, both Toronto Pearson International Airport and Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport had average departure delays of 28 minutes (and increasing), while Ottawa International Airport had average arrival delays of 32 minutes.
Earlier Wednesday, Air Canada tweeted that all customers traveling to and from the U.S. should check the status of their flights on its website after the FAA outage.
More than a quarter of Air Canada flights — 123 — were delayed as of 3 p.m. ET, FlightAware showed, while 13 were canceled.
A delayed flight leaves one traveler in tears — and out of $500
At Denver International Airport, the computer outage delayed Mine Mizrak’s Southwest flight to Los Angeles and forced her to miss her connecting Turkish Airlines flight to her native Istanbul, where she planned to reunite with family.
Mizrak, a mechanical engineer, moved to Denver last year, leaving behind her mother and other relatives, whom she hasn't seen since.
“I’ve been looking forward to this for the past month,” she said, sitting down in a chair counting the time until her next flight departs. Once she does, her trip will become pricier.
While Mizrak, 25, paid $1,000 in airfare, she said, she’ll have to pay an additional $500 once she lands in California to ensure she gets home because of her missed flight at LAX.
“I’ve been crying, because I could’ve spent that money on something else in Istanbul,” Mizrak said. She said Turkish Airlines won’t reimburse her for the money because the outages didn’t affect international flights.
A Turkish Airlines spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry.