On January 11, 2023, U.S. flights were grounded or delayed as the

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

(FAA) attempted to fix a system outage. FAA paused all flight departures until 9 a.m. ET. Flights already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations. Around 8:30 am. ET, flights were beginning to resume departures. The outage was the first time since

September 11, 2001 The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...

, that the FAA issued a nationwide

ground stop A ground stop is an air traffic control measure that slows or halts the flow of aircraft inbound to a given airport. In other words, a ground stop is the halting of departing aircraft destined for one particular airport or for a specific geograp ...

in the United States. A preliminary investigation of the incident demonstrated to FAA investigators that a "damaged database file" may have caused the outage of the FAA's Notice to Air Missions (

NOTAM A Notice to Airmen/Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM), is a notice filed with an aviation authority to alert aircraft pilots of potential hazards along a flight route or at a location that could affect the flight. NOTAMs are unclassified notices or ...

) system, responsible for notifying pilots of safety hazards. The FAA told CNN that there was "no evidence of a

cyberattack A cyberattack is any offensive maneuver that targets computer information systems, computer networks, infrastructures, or personal computer devices. An attacker is a person or process that attempts to access data, functions, or other restricted ...

" on its NOTAM system.

Incident

On January 10, 2023, NOTAM system stopped processing updates at 3:28 p.m. ET, and FAA issued the first Air Traffic Control System Command Center Advisory about this incident at 7:47 p.m. ET. At 7:30 a.m. ET on January 11, the FAA ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures after its pilot-alerting Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system went offline overnight, causing extensive disruption. Around 8:30 a.m. ET, flights were beginning to resume departures after the FAA terminated the NOTAM outage advisory, and departures at other airports were expected to resume by 9 am. ET. However, the airlines were free to implement their own ground delay programs subsequent to the ground stop being lifted, potentially leading to further timetable issues.

Aftermath

A total of 32,578 flights were delayed within, into or out of the United States as of 8:07 a.m. ET, and another 409 within, into or out of the country were also canceled. After the incident,

shares In financial markets, a share is a unit of equity ownership in the capital stock of a corporation, and can refer to units of mutual funds, limited partnerships, and real estate investment trusts. Share capital refers to all of the shares of an ...

of U.S. carriers fell in the premarket trading:

Southwest Airlines Southwest Airlines Co., typically referred to as Southwest, is one of the major airlines of the United States and the world's largest low-cost carrier. It is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has scheduled service to 121 destinations in the ...

was down 2.4%, while Delta Air Lines Inc,

United Airlines United Airlines, Inc. (commonly referred to as United), is a major American airline headquartered at the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois.

and

American Airlines American Airlines is a major US-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is the largest airline in the world when measured by fleet size, scheduled passengers carried, and revenue passenge ...

were down about 1%. Delta Airlines reported that it had a working backup to the FAA system, but decided not to use it. Delta Airlines CEO

Ed Bastian Edward H. Bastian (born June 6, 1957) is an American business executive. He is the ninth and current chief executive officer of Delta Air Lines, serving in this role since May 2, 2016. Early life and education Bastian grew up in Poughkeepsie, N ...

stated that they didn't use the backup system "out of deference" to the FAA and allowing the FAA to make the decisions. The FAA adopted new procedures for maintenance of the NOTAM system to prevent future outages.

Investigation

On January 13, 2023, the FAA stated that preliminary analysis of the outage indicates that it was caused by the failure of FAA personnel to follow proper procedures. The incident happened during routine scheduled maintenance. According to the FAA, one engineer mistakenly "replaced one file with another", not realizing that a mistake had been made. FAA officials stated that it was an "honest mistake that cost the country millions." It was later determined that the contractor unintentionally deleted files while "working to correct synchronization between the live primary database and a backup database."

Reactions

President Joe Biden was briefed on the FAA system outage. The

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, D.C., NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. preside ...

said there was no evidence of a

in relation to the system outage, but the president has asked for an investigation. House Transportation Committee Chair

Sam Graves Samuel Bruce Graves Jr. (born November 7, 1963) is an American politician serving as the United States representative for , serving since 2001. He is a member of the Republican Party. The district stretches across most of the northern third of ...

(R- MO) and

Rick Larsen Richard Ray Larsen (born June 15, 1965) is an American politician and lobbyist serving as the United States representative for since 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, Larsen is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the House ...

(D- WA) stated that the committee intended to conduct vigorous oversight of the Department of Transportation's plan to prevent such disruption from happening again. A group of more than 120 U.S lawmakers also told the FAA that such incidents were "completely unacceptable."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:FAA system outage, 2023 Aviation accidents and incidents in the United States in 2023 Aviation accidents and incidents in 2023 January 2023 events in the United States Federal Aviation Administration Technological failures

Incident

Aftermath

Investigation

Reactions

See also

References