The Federal Aviation Administration paused all domestic departures early Wednesday after an outage of its Notice to Air Missions system, or NOTAMS, which provides pilots with flight safety information and warnings.
“The FAA is still working to fully restore the Notice to Air Missions system following an outage,” the agency said in a statement at 7:15 a.m. ET. “The FAA has 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.”
A short time later, the agency said departures were resuming out of Newark Liberty (EWR) and Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson (ATL) airports “due to air traffic congestion in those areas.” It still expected departures to resume at other airports at 9 a.m. ET.
A video shared by Lou Mongello shows passengers leaving a plane at Orlando International Airport early Wednesday after their flight was delayed due to the outage.
U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the Department of Transportation to investigate the outage. There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the President directed DOT to conduct a full investigation into the causes, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted.
“I have been in touch with FAA this morning about an outage affecting a key system for providing safety information to pilots,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweeted. “FAA is working to resolve this issue swiftly and safely so that air traffic can resume normal operations, and will continue to provide updates.”
