FAA Suffers Widespread System Failures, Grounding Flights
Picking up where Southwest left off, the FAA grounded hundreds of flights on Wednesday morning.
The FAA reported that due to “technical outages” all domestic flights are paused at least until 9 a.m. Wednesday.
The failures originated in the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions system. NOMA keeps pilots and personnel up to date on in-flight issues as well as airport conditions and delays across the country.
The FAA is working to restore its Notice to Air Missions System. We are performing final validation checks and reloading the system now.
Operations across the National Airspace System are affected.
We will provide frequent updates as we make progress.
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023
“The NOTAM outage continued with no current estimated time of restoration,” the FAA website stated Wednesday morning.
“The FAA is working to restore its Notice to Air Missions System. We are performing final validation checks and repopulating the system now.
“While some functions are beginning to come back online, National Airspace System operations remain limited,” the statement continued.
Many airlines are grounding or canceling flights of their own accord, with some providers such as United Airlines grounding all aircraft until 10 a.m. Wednesday.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who has been under constant scrutiny for his part in the rail workers strike, the Southwest Airlines fiasco that plagued the end of year holidays and taking extravagant vacations on government and military aircraft with his husband, tweeted out he had been in contact with the FAA:
I have been in touch with FAA this morning about an outage affecting a key system for providing safety information to pilots. FAA is working to resolve this issue swiftly and safely so that air traffic can resume normal operations, and will continue to provide updates.
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) January 11, 2023
As reported by Fox News, “The incident comes roughly a week after an air traffic issue prompted the FAA to slow all flight traffic in Florida earlier in January. That failure involved the En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) at airports across the state.”
The agency says it will continue to keep passengers, pilots and aircraft personnel updated on the situation and hopes to be back up and operational soon. {eoa}
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James Lasher is Staff Writer for Charisma Media.