Planes turn back for airports as all flights in US grounded, tracker shows
The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered airlines to pause all US departures until 9am EST, following a major IT failure.
A key system used to notify pilots and ground staff of hazards and alerts has suffered a “major failure”, which FAA engineers are frantically trying to resolve.
The fault lies with the NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system, which keeps pilots and other airport staff updated about aviation hazards and airport facilities.
It stopped processing information this morning; while the FAA said there was no nationwide ground stop, “operations across the National Airspace System are affected.”
The US government transport agency said: “The FAA is working to restore its Notice to Air Missions System. We are performing final validation checks and repopulating the system now,” said a spokesperson for the FAA.”
It added: “We will provide frequent updates as we make progress.”
At least 400 flights have been delayed into, out of or across the US as of 5.31am ET, according to FlightAware.
What sort of IT outage is the FAA reporting?
The Federal Aviation Administration this morning reported that its NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) IT system was failing to process information.
The FAA describes NOTAM as as system which “indicate[s] the real-time and abnormal status of the NAS (National Air Space) impacting every user”.
It notifies both pilots and airport and ground staff of a number of incidents that may affect take-offs, landings and routes.
These could include: air shows and parachute jumps, military exercises affecting airspace, volcanic ash clouds, obstacles close to airfields, significant flocks of birds likely to cause bird strikes, or closed runways and taxiways.
Aviation analyst Alex Macheras told The Independent: “NOTAMs are essential for the safe continuation of global air travel.
“These essential notices and directives ultimately keep the world’s aviation sector, specifically flight crew and all personnel concerned with flight operations, informed and up to speed with latest air travel related directives, operational updates, security, weather and warnings.
“With a system failure…
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