The United States (US) government has grounded “all flights in the country” as a result of a system failure on Wednesday.
Passengers were reportedly stranded at airports around the world after scheduled departures were abruptly canceled.
In a statement, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed the flaw in its notice-to-air missions (NOTAM) system.
The agency is in charge of regulating all aviation aspects and protocols for all flights entering and leaving the United States.
They are performing final validation checks and reloading the system, according to the message.
“The FAA is working to restore its notice to air missions system. We are performing final validation checks and reloading the system now,” the statement reads.
“Operations across the national airspace system are affected.”
Meanwhile, according to the FAA, a NOTAM is a notice that contains information that is critical to flight operations personnel but is not known far enough in advance to be publicized through other means.
It stated that NOTAMs indicate the real-time and abnormal status of the national airspace system (NAS) that affects every user, as well as the establishment, condition, or change of any facility, service, procedure, or hazard in the NAS.
Following the system failure, the FAA ordered airlines to suspend operations until the problem was resolved.
“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,” it said in a tweet.
FlightAware, a flight tracking website, reported that 1,230 flights (out of 7,076) were delayed within, into, or out of the United States as of 1:44 p.m. on Wednesday.
An additional 111 flights within, into, or out of the United States were also canceled.
