American flights grounded due to computer error

TO UPDATE: President Joe Biden said the Transportation Department still doesn’t know what caused a major computer glitch that grounded flights across the United States, as reporters urged it to consider the possibility of a cyberattack.

“You don’t know what caused it. They expect to have a good idea of ​​the cause within a few hours and to respond at that time,” Biden said.

The FAA said just after 5:51 a.m. PT / 8:15 a.m. ET that departures at Newark and Atlanta airports had resumed and they expected departures at other airports to resume at 6:00 a.m. PT / 9:00 a.m. ET.

Naturally, the unusual system-wide outage drew the attention of major morning shows and cable news networks, which quickly dispatched correspondents to the nearest airports to assess the impact.

“You’re going to see a ripple effect today and well into the future,” Captain John Cox, an aviation analyst, said on MSNBC.

The FAA also said all flights currently in the air are safe to land. “Pilots check the NOTAM system before flying. A notice to flight missions alerts pilots to closed runways, equipment failures and other potential hazards along a flight path or location that could affect flight,” the agency said.

EARLIER: Air travel across the United States was halted this morning after a major computer failure occurred at the Federal Aviation Administration.

According to NBC News, all flights were grounded following the incident, which left thousands of customers across the country grounded with no clear timetable for a return to normal.

A statement from the FAA said it was working to restore air dispatch notification [NOTAM] System.”

“We are now doing final validation checks and rebooting the system. Operations throughout the National Airspace System are affected. We will provide regular updates as we make progress,” said the statement released around 3:30pm PT.

A follow-up message on Twitter said that “while some functions are coming back online, National Airspace System operations remain limited.”

No timeline has been set for full system recovery, meaning air travel will be unpredictable, at least for today.

According to flight tracker FlightAware.com, more than 1,200 flights “to, into or out of” the US are being delayed today.

American Air tweeted that the outage affected “all flights, including all airlines,” while United Airlines said it had “temporarily delayed all domestic flights.”

The disruption follows air traffic chaos caused by east coast storms at the turn of the year, with thousands of flights canceled due to weather.