Approximately 10,103 flights within, into or out of the United States have been delayed and 1,343 have been canceled as of 9:20 p.m. ET Wednesday, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday night it is “working diligently to further pinpoint the causes of this issue” behind the widespread cancellations and delays.
FAA still trying to determine who is responsible for corrupted file involved in system outage, official says
From CNN’s Pete Muntean
A government official familiar with the investigation into the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system outage told CNN the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is still trying to determine who is responsible for the corrupted file identified in the probe first reported by CNN. The NOTAM outage grounded flights across the US.
The official said they aren’t sure the nature of how that corruption happened, whether it was a “routine entry” or one that was coded wrong.
In a new statement Wednesday night, the FAA acknowledged there was a “damaged database file.” The agency says the investigation is ongoing.
“The FAA is continuing a thorough review to determine the root cause of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system outage. Our preliminary work has traced the outage to a damaged database file. At this time, there is no evidence of a cyberattack. The FAA is working diligently to further pinpoint the causes of this issue and take all needed steps to prevent this kind of disruption from happening again,” the statement read.
CNN first reported the FAA attempted to reboot the NOTAM system early Wednesday morning. When the corrupted files were discovered in both the main system and a backup system, the agency decided it needed to ground flights throughout the country until the situation could be resolved.
More than 9,000 flights have been delayed so far
As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, at least 9,207 flights within, into or from the US have been delayed and 1,309 were canceled, according to the flight-tracking site FlightAware.
It comes more than eight hours after the Federal Administration Aviation lifted a ground stop it issued in response to an outage of its Notice to Air Missions system.