The Federal Aviation Administration suffered a massive outage of one of its systems Wednesday, leading to flights being grounded nationwide.
The system in question was the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions, which serves as an important form of communication to pilots.
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The Notice to Air Missions differs from other methods of communication to pilots, as NOTAM notifies pilots of hazardous conditions that could harm the flight. Air traffic control, a commonly known form of pilot communication, coordinates where planes are and keeps them at a safe distance from each other.
The FAA considers NOTAM to be “a notice containing information essential to personnel concerned with flight operations but not known far enough in advance to be publicized by other means.” These alerts can include hazards such as an airshow taking place or lights being out on a runway at an airport. Pilots need information from this system in order to be aware of problems at airports or in airspace.
The system was previously known as the Notice to Airmen, but it was changed to the Notice to Air Missions by the FAA in Dec. 2021 to be “inclusive of all aviators and missions.”
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The cause of the hourslong NOTAM outage is being investigated, but the White House said there is “no evidence” it was a cyberattack.
The Wednesday NOTAM outage caused delays and flight cancellations nationwide, with more than 7,500 flights being delayed in the United States, per FlightAware.
