Massive Flight Disruptions As Ground Stop Lifted After FAA Outage

Domestic flights resumed in the U.S. after the FAA lifted a ground stop halting departures — resulting in a ripple effect of thousands of delays and hundreds of cancellations — following an outage to its Notice to Air Missions system.

The Notice to Air Missions system provides safety information to flight crews. The FAA said it ordered the pause to allow it time to validate the integrity of flight and safety information.

President Joe Biden was briefed on the outage Wednesday morning. The White House said initially there is no evidence of a cyberattack and Biden told reporters that he’s directed the Department of Transportation to investigate the cause of the disruption. The pause was ordered around 7:20 a.m. Eastern time and was lifted as of 8:50 a.m.

In response to a comment made by Rep. Rick Larsen, the top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who said that the outage “begs the question about the current state of the technology infrastructure at the FAA," Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg told CNN Wednesday that though the system is "continuously being upgraded and improved," that key question is one that they "have to look at based on what we saw overnight."

Buttigieg added that since an FAA reauthorization on a five-year bill that provides funding and direction will soon come before Congress, it is "the right time for us to be taking up those questions."

Addressing widespread fears that the outage means that a key system keeping passengers safe is vulnerable, Buttigieg told the outlet that "the FAA will always act to make sure that passengers are safe" and that "part of what you saw [Wednesday] was an act of caution to be sure that it was 100 percent airtight that the system was working properly.

"But I do think that broader question is a real one," Buttigieg added to CNN. "What are the redundancies, what are the backups, what are the means to make sure that a disruption like this does not happen ... We need to design a system that does not have those kinds of vulnerabilities."

Flights that were in the sky could land safely while the ground stop was in place, the FAA said.

"A Notice to Air Missions alerts pilots about closed runways, equipment outages, and other potential hazards along a flight route or at a location that could affect the flight," the agency explained.

More than 21,000 flights were scheduled to take off in the U.S. today, mostly domestic trips, and about 1,840 international flights were expected to fly to the U.S., according to aviation data firm Cirium.

As of 2:05 p.m., 1,198 flights within, into or out of the United States have been canceled, while 8,116 were delayed, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

Some airlines had begun grounding flights even before the FAA ordered the pause.

In a statement, American Airlines said it was closely monitoring the situation and working with the FAA to minimize customer disruptions.

The pause Wednesday comes around two weeks after a busy holiday travel period where severe weather disrupted flight plans for scores of Americans. Southwest Airlines had a complete meltdown in the storm's aftermath, leading the airline to cancel most of its flights and leave customers stranded for days.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.