The Federal Aviation Administration lifted an order to ground all flights across the United States shortly before 9 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday after a system failure left pilots, airlines and airports without crucial safety information for hours. The agency said that “normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the U.S.” The FAA is investigating the cause.
More than 7,000 flights within, into or out of the United States had been delayed Wednesday, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking service. The delays were spread across the country and affected multiple carriers.
Passengers across the country said their plans had been scuttled, with airport employees sometimes knowing little more than passengers.
President Joe Biden said that he had spoken with Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, and that he had asked him to report back when a cause for the failure had been identified. There was no evidence of a cyberattack, the administration said.
The disruption was caused by an outage to a system the FAA uses to send real-time safety alerts to pilots, called Notice to Air Mission alerts, which are crucial to planning flights and used to share information about hazards in the air or on the ground.