US: NOTAM system outage affects 7,000 flights, restored after hours
A critical system of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) suffered an unprecedented outage, resulting in at least 7,000 flights being affected across the country on Wednesday. The FAA notified that the US Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system was restored about seven hours later. Meanwhile, the White House ruled out the possibility that the outage was caused by a cyberattack.
Why does this story matter?
- NOTAM is a critical system operated by the FAA which alerts pilots and other flight personnel about potential hazards on a route, such as birds, runway closures, snow, or other obstacles, and the status of airports across the country.
- The technical glitch disrupted the travel plans of millions of people, including domestic fliers and those scheduled to travel into the United States from abroad.
Department of Transportation to investigate outage
Reportedly, more than 21,000 domestic flights and 1,840 international flights were scheduled to fly into the US throughout the day, as per aviation data company Cirium. The system outage delayed more than 6,000 flights and resulted in around 1,000 flights being canceled, according to the flight tracking platform FlightAware. President Joe Biden said he had instructed the Department of Transportation to probe the matter.
The glitch left scores of people stranded
The aviation system encountered the failure at 2:00 am Eastern Time (12:30 pm IST) on Wednesday, and the FAA ordered airlines to halt all domestic operations until 9:00 am ET (7:30 pm IST) as it tried to restore the system. After lifting the nationwide ground stop, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that federal officials were about to conduct a review of the system outage.
Outage traced to a damaged database file: FAA
Update 6: We are continuing a thorough review to determine the root cause of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system outage. Our preliminary work has traced the outage to a damaged database file. At this time, there is no evidence of a cyber attack. (1/2)
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023
Continuing thorough review to determine root cause: FAA's statement
A preliminary probe found a corrupt database file led to the NOTAM outage. The FAA stated, "The FAA is continuing a thorough review to determine the root cause... Our preliminary work has traced the outage to a damaged database file. At this time, there is no evidence of a cyber attack. The FAA is working diligently to further pinpoint the causes of this issue."
