All domestic flights in the United States were grounded for several hours earlier today after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a nationwide ground stop following the failure of a system alerting pilots to potential hazards on flight routes.
In a statement, the organisation said it was working to restore its Notice to Air Missions system following an outage.
“The FAA has ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9am Eastern Time (1400GMT) to allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information,” the statement added.
Flights have now begun to depart US airports after the FAA lifted the grounding order just before 9am ET (1400GMT).
US president Joe Biden has been briefed on the outage; his press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed in a statement.
“There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the President directed DOT [Department of Transportation] to conduct a full investigation into the causes,” she added.
In a statement, American Airlines said it was “closely monitoring the situation and working with the FAA to minimize customer disruptions.”
While JetBlue said: “We appreciate our customers patience and ask they continue to monitor their flight status.”
