The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has ordered airlines to halt all domestic departures until 9 a.m. ET on Wednesday due to a widespread technical issue.
The FAA’s NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system, which notifies pilots and other staff about airborne problems and other delays at airports around the US, malfunctioned, causing the outage. The FAA website announced Wednesday morning that “the NOTAM outage continues with no current projected time of restoration.”
“The Notice to Air Missions System is being repaired by the FAA. Final validation tests are being completed, and the system is currently being repopulated “In a statement, the FAA stated.
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The statement said, “National Airspace System operations remain constrained even though some functions are starting to come back online.”
The collapse of the system early on Wednesday had already led to the majority of carriers choosing to halt their own aircraft. According to FlightAware, the malfunction has so far led to the cancellation of 400 flights across the United States. The flight tracker also indicated that more than 1,150 domestic, international, and transit planes were delayed.
Due to the disruption, United Airlines decided to halt all of its aircraft until 10 a.m. ET.
The event occurred about a week after the FAA slowed all aviation activity in Florida earlier in January due to an air traffic problem. The En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) at airports throughout the state was engaged in that failure.
