Chaos at airports: PBIA sees delays, cancellations as nation affected by FAA computer outage

A computer glitch at the Federal Aviation Administration delayed airline traffic across much of the nation early Wednesday, with passengers traveling into and out of Palm Beach County-area airports experiencing delays and cancellations throughout the day.

The FAA instituted a nationwide pause on departures, known as a ground stop, for part of the morning Wednesday. The order had been lifted by 9 a.m. but flights continued to be affected because of the backups.

The White House said there was no evidence that a cyberattack triggered the outage, which upended travel plans for millions of passengers. President Joe Biden said he directed the Department of Transportation to investigate.

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As of 2:30 p.m., 68 flights in and out of Palm Beach International Airport had been delayed while 12 flights to and from the airport were canceled, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.

At Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, 274 departing and arriving flights had been delayed while 15 flights to and from the airport were canceled.

Nicole Hughes, manager of marketing and public information for PBIA, said some commercial and general aviation flights began taking off after the FAA lifted its nationwide ground stoppage shortly before 9 a.m. but the airport suffered delays and cancellations throughout the day. She advised passengers to check with their airlines before coming to the airport.

“We have had some delays because of where the flights are originating from, but we are slowly resuming operations,” Hughes said just after 9 a.m. “Most importantly, the airlines have the most up-to-date information on the flights, so passengers need to check with them before coming to the airport.”

Nearly 8,500 flights were delayed on East Coast because of the computer glitch

The breakdown showed how much American air travel depends on an antiquated computer system that generates alerts called NOTAMs — or Notice to Air Missions — to pilots and others.

Before a flight takes off, pilots and airline dispatchers must review the notices, which include details about weather, runway closures or construction and other information that could affect the flight. The system was once telephone-based, with pilots calling dedicated flight service stations for the information, but it has moved online.

The NOTAM system broke down late Tuesday and was not fixed until midmorning Wednesday, leading to more than 1,200 flight cancellations and more than 8,500 delays by early afternoon on the East Coast, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

Even after the Federal Aviation Administration lifted the order grounding planes, the chaos was expected to linger. More than 21,000 flights were scheduled to take off Wednesday in the U.S., mostly domestic trips, and about 1,840 international flights expected to fly to the U.S., according to aviation data firm Cirium.

Airports in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta saw 30% to 40% of flights delayed.

“There was a systems issue overnight that led to a ground stop because of the way safety information was moving through the system,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told a news conference. Although the problem was soon fixed, he warned that travelers could expect to see some effects “rippling through the system.”

Buttigieg said his agency would now try to learn why the NOTAM system went down.

Longtime aviation insiders could not recall an outage of such magnitude caused by a technology breakdown. Some compared it to the nationwide shutdown of airspace after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

“Periodically there have been local issues here or there, but this is pretty significant historically,” said Tim Campbell, a former senior vice president of air operations at American Airlines and now a consultant in Minneapolis.

Campbell said there has long been concern about the FAA’s technology, and not just the NOTAM system.

Many of those systems “are old mainframe systems that are generally reliable, but they are out of date,” he said.

John Cox, a former airline pilot and aviation safety expert, said there has been talk in the aviation industry for years about trying to modernize the NOTAM system, but he did not know the age of the servers that the FAA uses.

“I’ve been flying 53 years. I’ve never heard the system go down like this,” Cox said. “So something unusual happened.”

European flights into the U.S. appeared to be largely unaffected. Carriers including Ireland’s Aer Lingus and Germany’s Lufthansa said their schedules were unaffected.

It was the latest headache for travelers in the U.S. who faced weather-related flight cancellations over the holidays and a broad breakdown at Southwest Airlines.

Passengers also ran into long lines, lost baggage, and cancellations and delays over the summer as travel demand roared back from the COVID-19 pandemic and ran into staffing cutbacks at airports and airlines in the U.S. and Europe.

United Airlines issued a waiver for travelers at certain airports, allowing passengers whose flights were affected to alter their plans without paying a change fee or fare difference.

Southwest Airlines also announced a more flexible change policy for affected passengers. 

What you're entitled to if your flight is canceled or delayed

If your flight is canceled, the Department of Transportation requires airlines to refund your ticket if you choose not to rebook your travel, even if you bought a nonrefundable fare. In the event of a delay, policies vary by airline, but you may be entitled to compensation based on the length of your wait and other factors.

Check out USA TODAY'S summary of what you're owed.

The FAA notes that a NOTAM “states the abnormal status of a component of the National Airspace System (NAS) — not the normal status.” The federal agency adds that NOTAMs are “not known far enough in advance to be publicized by other means.”

"It’s a safety issue," Abdelghan said. "God forbid if the pilots are not updated with abnormal conditions it might lead to some serious problems like accidents or something like that."

The NOTAM system was telephone-based in the past, with pilots calling flight service stations for the information, but it has now moved online.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: FAUU computer glitch causes thousands of flight delays nationally