FAA computer outage: How it has affected travel to Springfield
An Allegiant Air flight from Punta Gorda, Florida to Springfield was delayed by over 45 minutes this morning after the failure of an important Federal Aviation Administration computer system shut down flights nationwide.
According to the airline, Allegiant Air Flight 902 was set to leave the coastal airport 24 miles north of Fort Myers at 8:30 a.m. local time. However, the computer glitch meant that any flight across the nation could not take to the air at the time. The flight left at 9:18 a.m. local time and is scheduled to arrive in Springfield at 10:45 a.m.
Because of this delay, a departure from Springfield was pushed back, with Allegiant Flight 914 being delayed until 11:30 a.m., more than 30 minutes later than originally scheduled.
From USA Today:Live updates: Many flights delayed, grounded across US over FAA computer outage
All other flights are scheduled to depart or arrive as scheduled.
Mark Hanna, executive director of the Springfield Airport Authority, said the Punta Gorda route was the only one affected by the shutdown, caused by a system failure in the Notice to Air Missions System, used to provide important safety information to airline pilots. An attempt to back the system up also failed, according to Hanna.
"If the FAA has an outage or something is out for maintenance, such as a landing system or radar, they will issue a Notice to Airmen that it is down for a period of time, it's inoperable for maintenance," Hanna said. "The airports locally issue notices as well, especially at this time of the year with winter weather. We issue Notices to Airmen on weather and airfield conditions – snow, ice, if there's a runway closed, things like that.
It is critical information for the pilot to have, and sometimes en route, conditions at the airport can change, so when they're en route and approaching the airport, they are relayed that information to make sure that pilots have all of the information so they can make a safe decision as far as how to approach the airport."
The FAA delayed all flights nationwide until 9 a.m. Eastern Time to provide validation to the information that pilots and airlines receive. Hanna said that a United Airlines flight to Chicago (O'Hare) made it out of the airport just before the shutdown at 6:37 a.m.
"That one actually departed early," Hanna said.
Flights are "gradually" returning to normal following the delay, and the FAA is attempting to investigate what led to the initial problem. Hanna said that staff is reviewing any notices to pilots for any information that might have been lost during the hours-long delay.
"On a local level, we'll be coordinating with the FAA to make sure all of the FAA-imposed Notices to Airmen are, in fact, as they should be, prior to the shutdown," Hanna said. "As far as safety is concerned, we're making sure that all the airmen make sure (they're) getting the current information to make sure that they're wasn't anything missing that was previously there."
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: At least one flight to Springfield affected by FAA computer problem
