The US Federal Aviation Administration has attributed a nationwide ground stop that disrupted thousands of flights to an outage in an outdated computer system used to relay safety notices to pilots. The Notice to Air Missions system, known as NOTAM, failed early on Wednesday, prompting the regulator to halt all domestic departures for several hours while officials worked to restore service. More than 10,000 flights were delayed and over 1,000 cancelled, according to tracking data, with knock-on effects felt at airports across the country and on some international routes. The White House said President Joe Biden had been briefed and that there was no evidence of a cyberattack, though officials acknowledged the disruption exposed the fragility of ageing infrastructure.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the incident stemmed from a failure in a redundant system and that a backup did not function as intended, adding that the department would examine the root cause. The FAA has faced long-standing criticism over its reliance on legacy technology, and the outage has renewed calls in Congress for modernisation funding. Aviation analysts noted that the NOTAM system is decades old and had previously experienced smaller failures. The agency said it was working to identify what triggered the outage and would take steps to prevent a recurrence, while airlines warned that residual delays could persist through the day as they repositioned aircraft and crews.
Independent reporting synthesized from primary wires and global correspondents.