Flights disrupted across US after major system failure

Abubakar Yunus Abuja

The US government has grounded “all flights in the country” following a system failure on Wednesday.

The development reportedly left passengers stranded at various airports across the globe, as planned departures were suddenly cancelled.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed the glitch in its notice-to-air missions (NOTAM) system in a statement.

The agency is in charge of regulating all aspects and protocols related to aviation for all flights entering and leaving the US.

It said they are performing final validation checks and reloading the system.

“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 FAA, a NOTAM is a notice containing information essential to personnel concerned with flight operations but not known far enough in advance to be publicised by other means.

It said the NOTAMs indicates the real-time and abnormal status of the national airspace system (NAS) impacting every user, adding that it also concerns the establishment, condition, or change of any facility, service, procedure or hazard in the NAS.

The following the system collapse, FAA ordered airlines to suspend operations until the issue is 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.

Checks on FlightAware, flight tracking website, showed that 1,230 flights (out of 7,076) were delay within, into, or out of the United States on Wednesday at 1:44 pm.

An additional 111 flights within, into or out of the United States were also cancelled.