All flights across USA grounded as key computer crashes

All flights across the United States were grounded on Wednesday as the Federal Aviation Administration ordered all domestic flight departures to halt after the computer system providing pilots with pre-flight safety notices went offline, according to a CNN report.

The FAA said in a statement it had ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9 a.m. Eastern Time while it tried to restore its NOTAMS — or Notice to Air Missions — system.

“We are performing final validation checks and repopulating the system now,” an earlier FAA statement said. “Operations across the National Airspace System are affected. We will provide frequent updates as we make progress.”

FlightAware, which tracks delays and cancellations, showed over 1,200 flights to, from and within the United States as being delayed as of 6:45 am ET, but only 93 flights cancelled so far.

“Technicians are currently working to restore the system and there is no estimate for restoration of the system at the time,” an advisory by US Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATSCC) said.

FAA also said that some functions of the Notice to Air Missions system are beginning to come back online.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweeted, ” 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.”

The association representing US airlines, Airlines for America says the outage is “causing significant operational delays.”