Questions Linger After FAA Glitch Temporarily Grounds All US Flights
Airline employees began informing travelers early Wednesday morning that their flights within or out of the United States would be delayed due to a system outage.
(Image: Rayhan Fahmi/Unsplash)
At 6:29 a.m. EST, the FAA that it was working to restore NOTAM and would be conducting a forthcoming reload. But it wasn’t until 8:50 a.m. EST that the agency reported a gradual return to normal operations. By that time, flight tracker FlightAware had taken stock of more than 4,000 . Over 800 flights had been canceled altogether.
The FAA has not provided an explanation for the glitch as of this writing. As one can imagine, this hasn’t helped the influx of conspiracy theories currently cropping up on social media. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reportedly briefed President Biden on the issue early Wednesday as the FAA was working on its reboot. According to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, there isn’t evidence for the glitch having been the result of a cyberattack, but the Department of Transportation has been told to launch a full investigation.
“They don’t know what the cause of it is,” Biden told reporters. “They expect in a couple of hours they’ll have a good sense of what caused it and will respond at that time.” There has been no public response since.
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