Flights across US grounded amid system failure, Biden orders probe

All US flights have been grounded after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it experienced a computer outage.

All the flights across the United States were grounded on Wednesday following the incident, a source with knowledge of the matter told US media.

"Operations across the National Airspace System are affected," the FAA said in a statement.

FAA said it had "ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9 a.m. Eastern Time to allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information."

The FAA's system for alerting pilots and airports of real-time hazards, called NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions), went dark around 3:28 a.m. ET.

"The FAA is experiencing an outage that is impacting the update of NOTAMS. All flights are unable to be released at this time," the FAA said in an advisory announcing the issue. It said it was still working to fully restore the NOTAM system following the outage.

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

More than 2,500 flights within, into and out of the United States were delayed as of around 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning, according to online flight tracker FlightAware. Nearly 250 flights were listed as cancelled.

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US President Joe Biden said aviation authorities were still unaware what had triggered the grounding of the fights across the US. 

"I just spoke with (Transportation Secretary Pete) Buttigieg. They don't know what the cause is. But I was on the phone with him" Biden said. "I told them to report directly to me when they find out. Aircraft can still land safely, just not take off right now. They don't know what the cause of it is; they expect in a couple of hours, they'll have a good sense of what caused it and will respond at that time."

Buttigieg added in a tweet that he had "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," he said.

Cleared Update No. 2 for all stakeholders: ⁰⁰The FAA is still working to fully restore the Notice to Air Missions system following an outage. ⁰⁰While some functions are beginning to come back on line, National Airspace System operations remain limited.

— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023

Meanwhile, the White House announced that it had "no evidence" of this being caused by a cyberattack "at this point."

“There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a tweet.

"The President directed (the Department of Transportation) to conduct a full investigation into the causes,” she said.

Jean-Pierre said the FAA would provide regular updates.

The ground stop was eventually lifted shortly before 9 a.m. ET. More than 4,000 US flights were affected by the FAA system's outage which lasted about 5 hours.

In this regard, US Senate Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said the panel plans to review the cause of the FAA's computer outage and devise a system to prevent future incidents like it. "We will be looking into what caused this outage and how redundancy plays a role in preventing future outages. The public needs a resilient air transportation system," Cantwell said.

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