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After several hours of chaos, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported that the flight safety system has been restoredwhich made it possible to lift its ban on airport operations throughout the country.
“The FAA has determined that the security system affected by the overnight blackout has been fully restored. The Nationwide landing suspension will be lifted with immediate effect”Reported the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg.
The official added that an investigation will soon be opened into the causes of the problem at the national level and the next steps.
President Joe Biden had pressured Buttigieg to take action on the flight problem.
“I just spoke with Buttigieg. They don’t know what the cause is… I told them to inform me directly when they find out [qué ocurrió]Biden said as he left the White House this morning. “Planes can still land safely, but not take off right now. They don’t know what the cause is, they hope that in a couple of hours they will have a good idea of what caused it.”
At 6:30 a.m. ET, the FAA reported the chaos caused by the failure of the Air Mission Alert system, which led to an order for airlines to suspend all domestic flight departures until at least 5:00 p.m. 9 a.m. hours.
At 8:50 a.m., the FAA indicated that the flight operation would be gradually restored, after lifting the suspension of flights of almost three hours.
Update 5: Normal air traffic operations are gradually resuming across the US following an overnight outage to the Notice to Air Missions system that provides safety information to flight crews. The ground stop has been lifted.
We continue to look into the cause of the initial problem
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023
In the midst of the chaos due to the suspension of departures, the authority affirmed that the landing of the flights already in process was safe.
Airports in the US have faced serious problems in the last month with thousands of flight cancellations, due to snow storms and now security system failures.
This Wednesday’s alert is only comparable to the one that occurred on 9/11 during the terrorist attacks.
The tracking service FlightAware showed that at least 900 flights had been cancelled. around 10 am, but hundreds more are expected to be called off due to backlogs.
The investigation is ongoing, but according to a report by The Washington Post, carriers and Department of Transportation officials are pointing fingers at each other over the failures, raising concerns about the US flight system.