Federal Aviation Administration Suffers Complete Outage, All Planes Grounded
The Federal Aviation Administration suffered a total system outage, causing all planes to be grounded until the issue can be resolved.
If you had made plans and purchased tickets to travel by airplane on the morning of Wednesday, January 11th, you were greeted at the airport with a complete halting of all departing flights at every airport in the United States. After a storm wreaked havoc a mere two weeks ago that caused travelers major delays and cancellations over the Christmas holiday weekend, we have another major airlines debacle brewing, but this time it doesn’t have anything to do with an inept airline carrier dropping the ball and causing mass chaos, Southwest Airlines can relax for a minute. It was our own Federal Aviation Administration that was the culprit this time around as they issued a nationwide directive that no domestic flights were going to be able to depart from their current locations until possibly 9:30 am Eastern Standard Time.
According to CNBC, “Thousands of U.S. flights were delayed Wednesday morning after the Federal Aviation Administration suffered an outage of the system that sends messages to pilots.” The system that is down is a critical communication system that gives flights direct contact with the FAA if something, either mechanical or environmental, is out of the ordinary on the flight. It is also a communication link for the FAA to all their flights in the air at the same time if mass communication needs to go out to the pilots.
Until that system is repaired by the FAA all departing flights are being grounded until a minimum of 9:30 am Eastern Time. At that time the FAA will make the determination on whether to lift or extend that departure ban. This has caused more than 3,500 domestic departures to be delayed starting the day at every airport in the country.
Even once this departure restriction is lifted, this backup could take all day and possibly into tomorrow for all the airlines to get caught back up. Southwest Airlines is already canceling flights to help it stay ahead of the delays and not find itself in the same situation that they were in a week ago with its entire staff not in the right places to quickly untangle the mess from the delays. All flights that were currently in the air when the system went down are safe to land their planes as the faulty technology would not impact flight instruments or communication with the air traffic control tower.
President Joe Biden has received a briefing from United States Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about the outage. United States Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted, “There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the President directed DOT to conduct a full investigation into the causes.” An investigation will determine exactly why the system went down so that measures can be taken to ensure that the FAA is not the cause of future nationwide travel disruptions.
This is especially true coming on the heels of the Southwest Airlines meltdown two weeks ago where they canceled over 15,000 flights due to their internal scheduling and systems not being able to handle the delays. Those delays were created by a powerful winter storm that swept through most of the country. Even though all airlines experienced cancelations and delays, most of them were able to rebound within a day or two whereas Southwest was still canceling up to 70% of their schedule five days after the weather event occurred stranding tens of thousands of travelers all over the country.
