America’s Federal Aviation Authority has already cleared take-offs across the country, after operations were suspended for several hours due to a malfunction in the main flight information system. President Joe Biden has ordered an investigation into whether it was a cyber attack.
According to the United States’ Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), a failure in the flight notification system is at risk. “We are performing final validation tests and now rebooting. Operations across the National Space System are affected,” he initially announced on Twitter.
Later, the FAA said “certain operations” were already active, but take-offs were suspended to guarantee the safety of the planes.
In a recent update on Twitter, the FAA notes that “airline operations are gradually resuming” and that the “ground stop has been lifted,” so domestic flights can now take off. “We are continuing to investigate the cause of the initial issue.”
Cleared update number for all stakeholders. 2: ⁰⁰Following an outage, the FAA is still working to fully restore notice to air travel. ⁰⁰While some operations are beginning to return, National Aeronautics and Space Administration operations remain limited.
— FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023
Update 3: The FAA is still working to fully restore the notice to air travel following the outage.
— FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023
UPDATE 5: Regular air travel operations are gradually resuming across the United States following an overnight suspension of notices for air travel providing safety information to aircrews. Ground stop removed.
We are continuing to investigate the cause of the initial issue
— FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023
Officials estimated that more than 4,000 flights were delayed and about 700 were canceled.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said in a post on the social network Twitter that, at this time, there was “no indication” that the suspension was related to a cyber attack.
“The President has been notified by the Department of Transportation of the outage affecting FAA systems. There is currently no indication of a cyber attack, but the President has directed the Department of Transportation to conduct an investigation,” he underscored.
The US president was later quoted in a statement as saying that he had been in contact with Transport Minister Pete Buttigieg and that the reasons were not yet known.
“I asked him to inform me directly as soon as he knows what happened. They don’t know yet, but they hope to find out in a few hours so that necessary steps can be taken,” he said.
