The American Federal Aviation Administration system is down, resulting in thousands of flight delays and cancellations across the country. In a tweet, the agency stated that its Notice to Air Mission Systems (NOTAM) system was down, affecting operations throughout US airspace.
According to FlightAware, over 10,000 flights have been delayed and over 1,300 have been canceled, making this the first national grounding of flights in nearly two decades.
The FAA claims that the delays were caused by a failure of its Notice to Air Missions System, which sends safety and other important notifications to pilots. It also stated that when the system crashed overnight, it performed a hard reset.
The FAA computer problem had prevented airports from filing updated safety notices, which would have warned pilots of potential hazards such as runway closures, bad weather, and construction, causing flights to be temporarily halted.
The FAA acknowledged in a statement that the outage was caused by a corrupted file. “Our preliminary investigation has linked the outage to a corrupted database file. There is currently no evidence of a cyberattack “The FAA stated this.
However, it is believed that the FAA relies on outdated computers and infrastructure to run some of its systems. To meet current demand, these outdated infrastructures must be modernized.
The sources for this piece include articles in Axios, TheRegister and Reuters.