US flights resume after system failure causes FAA to halt air travel
The Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system, a centralized database operated by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that provides key safety information for all air travel nationwide, was back online Wednesday morning after an outage that grounded flights across the country.
NOTAM provides an automated, central source of critical flight data for aviators, noting information like closed runways at particular airports, equipment outages, and hazards along travel routes. The FAA’s first public notice of the outage was in a tweet sent at approximately 6:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, but it’s unclear at what point, overnight, that the system actually went down. As of 9 a.m. EST, the FAA said in a follow-up tweet, the system was fully restored.