A Sudden FAA Failure Grounded All U.S. Domestic Flight Departures for Hours

• An FAA system failure has delayed or canceled at least 1,000 flights across the U.S. from airlines like American and United.

• The FAA says a system called the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAMS) is currently down.

• It is unknown when the service will be fully restored.

Update 10 a.m. E.T.: The FAA has lifted its order grounding all domestic flights, hours after more than 4,500 flights were reportedly canceled or delayed following the NOTAMS system failure.

“Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the U.S. following an overnight outage to the Notice to Air Missions system that provides safety info to flight crews,” the FAA said in a statement. “The ground stop has been lifted. We continue to look into the cause of the initial problem.”

The White House does not believe the outage is the result of a cyberattack, according to the New York Times.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered commercial airlines to pause all domestic departures in the U.S. until 9 a.m. E.T. on Wednesday following a system failure that has grounded thousands of flights.

The problem is an outage in the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAMS) system, which alerts pilots of real-time information regarding flight statuses, such as flight safety hazards and restrictions. Not all commercial airlines solely rely on NOTAMS, but several carriers, including American Airlines and United Airlines, canceled or delayed flights due to the failure on Wednesday.

American Airlines is “closely monitoring the situation, which impacts all airlines, and working with the FAA to minimize disruption to our operation and customers,” the airline said in a statement. United, meanwhile, has also temporarily postponed all domestic flights while the FAA works to resolve the situation.

On early Wednesday morning, the FAA said “some functions are beginning to come back on line,” an update on an earlier message from the agency that said “there is no estimation for restoration of the service at this time,” per CNN. But the agency’s most recent update has ordered all airlines to pause their domestic departures so the agency can “validate the integrity of flight and safety information.”

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While it’s unknown how many domestic flights are currently affected by the FAA failure, the flight-tracking website FlightAware shows approximately 1,100 flights to, from, and within the U.S. as being delayed as of 7:15 a.m. Wednesday, with at least 90 flights canceled so far, according to the New York Times.

We will continue to update this story as more information develops.

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