The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded all domestic flights on Wednesday morning due to a widespread outage in its system that alerts pilots to safety hazards. The disruption, which lasted for approximately 90 minutes, caused thousands of flights to be delayed and hundreds to be canceled.
Officials stated that the outage was caused by an overloaded piece of old equipment and confirmed that it was not the result of a cyberattack or a Microsoft system failure. The system that failed is known as the Notice to Air Missions system (NOTAM), which provides crucial information to pilots before every flight, including runway closures, equipment outages, and other potential dangers.
This nationwide ground stop is the longest since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The FAA began restoring its systems around 8:30 AM ET, and by 9:30 AM ET, flights were able to resume operations. However, the ripple effect of the outage continued to cause significant delays and cancellations throughout the day as airlines worked to get their schedules back on track. The Department of Transportation said it would conduct a full review into the causes of the outage.