In the United States, all air traffic turned upside down by a computer failure

A computer outage forced the US civil aviation regulator (FAA) to temporarily suspend all domestic flight departures on Wednesday morning, causing widespread delays, with the White House ruling out the possibility of a cyberattack at this stage. The incident , which began overnight Tuesday to Wednesday, affected a crucial information system for pilots and crews.To ensure air traffic safety, the FAA decided to prevent all takeoffs of domestic flights until at 09:00 on the east coast of the country (14:00 GMT), time to resolve the problem.

Only the airports of Newark, located in the western suburbs of New York, and Atlanta were able to resume a little faster to avoid excessive traffic congestion.

According to the FAA’s latest tweet, “normal air traffic operations are gradually resuming” across the country. The agency “continues to investigate the cause of the initial problem”.

Asked about the subject before the take-off ban was lifted, US President Joe Biden said he spoke with his Minister of Transport, Pete Buttigieg, but did not know the origin of the breakdown for the moment. Regulators “expect to have a better idea in a few hours and will react then,” he said.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said on Twitter that there was at this stage “no sign that this was a cyberattack”.

6.000 vols
In total, according to the specialized site Flight Aware, nearly 6,000 flights were delayed in the United States at 10:35 a.m. (3:35 p.m. GMT), with repercussions in Canada and Mexico.

At Ronald Reagan airport, located near Washington, the departure boards were riddled with red flags indicating delays.
“We’re going to miss our connection,” laments AFP Lisa Nho, who is waiting with her almost two-year-old daughter for a flight to Texas, normally followed by another flight to Cabo, Mexico. “We were leaving when we received a text saying that the flight would be delayed,” she explained.
Vince Hamilton’s flight to Chicago has already been delayed twice. If he misses his connection in St. Louis, where he’s supposed to catch a bus, he plans to rent a car.

At Mexico City airport, several flights to the United States were also delayed, noted an AFP journalist.

“Customers may continue to experience delays and cancellations while we work to restore our program, and should check” the company’s app or site for the latest information on their flight, United Airlines points out in a statement. message.
“We are monitoring the situation closely and working with the FAA to minimize disruption to customers,” American Airlines said in a separate statement.

This episode of disruptions in American airports comes some time after a great chaos triggered at Christmas time by a wave of extreme cold accompanied by snowfall, and which had been prolonged for several days by cascading cancellations within the Southwest Company.

The Notice To Air Missions (NOTAM) system, affected by Wednesday’s outage, provides information to aircrew about risks, airport developments and other critical information. This system is “essential in the information required for the conduct of ground / air operations”, explained to AFP Michel Merluzeau, analyst for the AIR cabinet. “This may include airport information, special activities like military operations, or temporary flight restrictions,” he continued.

A total of 21,464 flights are expected to take off from the United States on Wednesday, the vast majority being domestic routes, according to figures from specialist firm Juliett Alpha. About 2 million passengers are potentially affected by the incident.

Pete Buttigieg said on Twitter that he had requested an investigation “to determine the causes (of the outage) and recommend next steps”.

The chair of the US Senate Committee on Transportation, Maria Cantwell, also warned that a committee would examine the causes of the disruptions. “The public needs a resilient air transport system,” she said in a statement.