FAA says ‘damaged database file’ prompted halt on domestic US flights

The US aviation regulator has blamed a damaged database file for the failure of a critical flight safety system that prompted it to halt all domestic departures for two hours on Wednesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered the rare shutdown of domestic air traffic after a failure of the so-called Notice to Air Missions system, which provides real-time information about potential hazards to pilots and crew members.

More than 1,300 flights to or from US airports had been cancelled and about 9,500 were delayed by 6:30pm Eastern time, nearly 12 hours after the FAA ordered the halt, according to data from flight tracking website FlightAware.

The FAA said in a Twitter post just before 9am ET that it was resuming normal flight schedules.

The agency said Wednesday evening that while a preliminary investigation had traced the outage to a damaged file, it was “working diligently to further pinpoint the causes of this issue”. It also said there was no evidence of a cyber attack.

Update 5: Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the U.S. following an overnight outage to the Notice to Air Missions system that provides safety info to flight crews. The ground stop has been lifted.

We continue to look into the cause of the initial problem

— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023

The agency ordered the rare “ground stop” just after 7am ET as it struggled to restore the critical safety system. But it stressed that flights in the air were safe to land.

A widespread ban on all flight departures is highly unusual. The longest previous example followed the September 11 2001 terror attacks, in which aircraft were used to destroy New York City’s World Trade Center.

The problems come less than a month after bad weather triggered mass disruption and thousands of flight cancellations.

US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Wednesday morning he had been “in touch” with the FAA about the system outage. After its restoration and the lifting of the flight halt, he said on Twitter he had “directed an after-action process to determine root causes and recommend next steps”.

At 6.27am ET, United Airlines had announced a “ground stop” for all flights until 10am ET. The carrier began resuming operations once the overall halt was lifted and said on Twitter that its customers affected by the disruption would be issued a travel waiver.

Another large airline, Southwest Airlines, said it was “closely monitoring” the situation and asked passengers to check their flight status. American Airlines also said it was “closely monitoring” the situation.

Departure boards showed that just three of the 20 flights scheduled to leave New York City’s John F Kennedy airport between 5.40am and 6.10am ET managed to take off.

Nearly 21,500 flights were due to depart from US airports on Wednesday, according to aviation data company Cirium.