US flights grounded LIVE: FAA updates after NOTAM system outage

Southwest Airlines is discounting its flights with one-way fares starting at just $49.

The flights must be booked by 11:59 p.m. PT on January 12 and is valid on travel from January 31 through May 17, according to Southwest.

Travel is available for one-way Wanna Get Away® fares. The deal comes after thousands odf flights were grounded on Wednesday due to an FAA outage and as a way to deal with the fallout of the holiday travel week meltdown. 

Blackout dates are Feb. 16 and 20, with international travel and flights to San Juan, Puerto Rico, also excluded from March 9 through April 10 and travel from the mainland U.S. to Hawaii blacked out March 16 through April 10.

The deals are available only on certain days for some routes, most of them on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

As of 12 noon EST on Wednesday, there had been 7,344 flights canceled and 1,145 flights delayed, as travel chaos continued. 

FAA announced it had grounded all flights as a result of an overnight crash of its NOTAM system - which pilots use to receive hazard warnings and safety updates.

By 9am, the issue had been resolved and flights were beginning to take off again.

But the hours-long pause sent the day's travel into chaos that is expected to last hours - if not days. 

The FAA is yet to explain how the catastrophic glitch came about or why there was no back-up system in place to ensure planes could continue to fly.

All that the White House has said is that there is no evidence of a cyber attack 'at this point', but no further details have been given.

The FAA says the disruption was caused by an outage in the system that alerts pilots to hazards and changes to airport facilities and procedures that had stopped processing updated information.

What is the NOTAM system?

The halt on takeoffs was prompted by a failure in what is known as the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system.

A NOTAM is a notice containing information essential to pilots and other flight personnel, but not known far enough in advance to be publicized by other means.

Before commencing a flight, pilots are required to consult NOTAMs, which list potential adverse impacts on flights, from runway construction to the potential for icing.

Information can go up to 200 pages for long-haul international flights and may include items such as runway closures, general bird hazard warnings, or low-altitude construction obstacles.

The NOTAMs sent by the FAA are part of a global safety system managed through the United Nations' aviation agency. 

In an advisory, the FAA said its NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system had 'failed'. 

Why were all US flights grounded?

With the NOTAM system offline, air traffic controllers couldn't risk allowing pilots to take off without potentially key information about hazards on their route.

In the past, pilot lapses in reviewing information in NOTAMs have nearly led to deadly incidents.

Could this be a cyber attack?

The White House said that there is no evidence of a cyber attack, but President Joe Biden directed the Department of Transportation to investigate the cause of the disruption.

Biden addressed the FAA issue Wednesday before leaving the White House. He said he had just been briefed by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who told him they still had not identified what went wrong.

Has this ever happened before?

The last time the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop, halting all departures from US airports, was in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Regional or airport-specific ground stops have been issued since then, primarily over security incidents, though even those are quite rare.

A passenger desperately trying to get to Miami Wednesday for an emergency trip to see mom in the hospital said his flight was canceled. 

He tweeted: 'My mom is in the hospital, an emergency trip to Miami in a couple of hours.

Please do whatever you do to make positive things happen for her.'

But his flight was canceled due to the FAA outage. And he got more bad news. 

'Just to keep the homies informed, they found an unruptured aneurysm in my mom's brain so surgery is very likely but they caught it early. Will have more info tomorrow after talking to the surgeon,' he tweeted. 

The passenger said he was able to get a flight out on Thursday. 

While the computer issue has been resolved, the hours-long pause sent the day's flights into chaos that is expected to last throughout the day.

Already, 4,000 flights have been delayed as a result of the outage.

Many angry passengers tweeted their frustrations at the airlines today. 

Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the United States following an overnight outage to the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system that provides safety information to flight crews.

The ground stop has been lifted.

The agency continues to look into the cause of the initial problem.

The problem was first reported shortly before 6.30am EST, with the FAA announcing an outage of its NOTAM system.

By 9am, it had been resolved and flights were beginning to take off again after a two-and-a-half-hour ground order.

Departures from Newark Airport in New Jersey - one of the major New York City airports - and Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson - one of the busiest airports in the world - are 'resuming', according to the FAA.

So far 4,000 flights have been delayed by the outage - with more delays expected throughout the day. 

The FAA says flights are expected to take off again from 9am. 

Passengers on Americans Airlines Flight 51 have been on their plane waiting to depart London for Dallas, Texas because of the FAA outage.

Dallas resident Shabnam Amini posted a tweet saying they were supposed to depart at 9:55a local time in London but three hours later, have still had not taken off. 

 They were informed that there were delays because of the FAA outage prior to boarding, Amini told CNN, but proceeded to get on the aircraft anyway.

FlightRadar has reported that the flight took off around 1p local London time. 

Disgruntled travelers have told DailyMail.com they are having to cancel long-standing plans because of the FAA systems failure chaos.

Elspeth Nairn was meant to be heading out of Tampa International Airport this morning to help her sister who lives in Kona, Hawaii and has broken her hip.

‘I’m left with no choice but to cancel everything and rebook for Friday,’ retired Nairn, of Bradenton, Florida, said. ‘My flight was meant to go through Phoenix and that one was also cancelled.

‘So I’m leaving the airport and going home now. I’m rebooking for Friday, because that looks like the earliest I can make it. It’s better to cancel and let this hubbub clear.

‘I’m very disappointed. My sister had fallen and broken her hip and the purpose of my trip is to help her.’

Electrical safety engineer Daryl Leak, waiting for a flight to Dallas and a connection to Denver, Colorado, told DailyMail.com: ‘This is my second delay in five days. If it’s not sorted within the next 20 minutes I’m going to be forced to cancel and go home because I’m not going to make any connection.

‘I’m an electrical safety inspector and I’m working. But it looks like everything will have to be pushed back. It’s incredibly annoying.’

Leak, from Tampa, said his previous delay eventually saw him driving 650 miles from Raleigh, North Carolina, to his home. ‘I was at Raleigh-Durham airport and they cancelled me at 9pm. The next flight was 4.30pm next day so I drove – nothing else for it.’

As the morning wore on at Tampa International, more and more passengers were being processed through TSA security – but with no flights to board.

As many as 3,704 flights have been delayed by the outage - with more delays expected throughout the day.

The system went down sometime before 6.30am EST on Wednesday. The cause of the failure is unclear. President Biden told reporters that he had spoken with Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg and ordered a full investigation.

Departures from Newark Airport in New Jersey - one of the major New York City airports - and Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson - one of the busiest airports in the world - are 'resuming', according to the FAA.

Other departures from different airports are expected to resume at 9am.

Departures are resuming at Newark Liberty and Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airports due to air traffic congestion in those areas, according to the FAA.

'We expect departures to resume at other airports at 9 a.m. Eastern Time,' the tweet said. 

Newark had tweeted: 'Air traffic control issues nationwide may affect EWR Airport flights. Contact your airline for flight status.'

All flights currently in the sky are safe to land, the FAA said in the latest update.

The White House said that there is no evidence of a cyberattack, but President Joe Biden directed the Department of Transportation to investigate the cause of the disruption.

President Joe Biden addressed the FAA issue Wednesday before leaving the White House. He said he had just been briefed by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who told him they still had not identified what went wrong.

'I just spoke to Buttigieg. They don't know what the cause is. But I was on the phone with him about 10 minutes,' Biden said. 'I told him to report directly to me when they find out. Air traffic can still land safely, just not take off right now. We don't know what the cause of it is.'

Buttigieg said in a tweet that he is in touch with the FAA and monitoring the situation.

Wednesday saw thousands of flights across the US grounded by the the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), due to a failure in the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAMs) system.

In the world of aviation, NOTAM is an unclassified notice that contains vital information for those concerned with flight operations, while not being delivered far enough in advance to be in the public realm through other means.

A NOTAM is filed with a country's aviation authority - in the case of the US, the FAA - to alert other pilots of any hazards on their route.

The authority then distributes these notices to relevant pilots.

A NOTAM 'states the abnormal status of a component of the National Airspace System (NAS) – not the normal status,' the FAA website explains.

Among the hazards flagged by NOTAM include air shows, parachute jumps, rocket launches, as well as changes in operations such as runway closures or airspace restrictions caused by military exercises.

Criticism has ben levelled at NOTAMs which can go up to 200 pages for long-haul international flights.

In 2017, an Air Canada flight nearly crashed into four other airlines as it attempted to land in San Francisco.

The flight misidentified a taxiway as a runway. Information about the adjacent runway being closed was buried in the NOTAM.

Total cancelations for flights leaving or entering the United States by 8 a.m. Wednesday morning stood at 306, according to tracking website FlightAware.

And 2,512 flights had been delayed.

All flights across America have been grounded this morning until at least 9am EST by an FAA systems failure that has left thousands of people stranded at airports.. 

The problem is with the Notice to Air Missions System, which pilots use to access flight paths and communicate with air traffic controllers about hazards. 

That system went down sometime before 6am EST on Wednesday morning and as of 7.30am, it remains unfixed. 

In the interest of safety, the FAA has grounded all commercial and private planes. 

The cause of the failure is unclear. President Biden told reporters on Wednesday morning that he had spoken with Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg and ordered a full investigation. 

Planes can still land safely, but none are allowed to take off domestically for at least another hour.