[Updated] FAA 'NOTAM' system not working or down: Outage leaves many flights grounded, fix in the works

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on January 11, 2023) follows:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the government agency in charge of regulating all aspects and protocols related to aviation for all flights entering and leaving the U.S. territory.

This means that the agency must authorize any flight. So, if the agency system is not available, the aviation will be temporarily paralyzed.

This is currently occurring according to multiple reports indicating that the FAA ‘NOTAM’ system is down or not working at the time of writing this story.

Several travelers report that their flights are grounded due to massive outage in the FAA ‘NOTAM’ system. According to the FAA, ‘NOTAM’ includes the following:

Due to outage in the FAA system, airports cannot transmit or receive the NOTAM. This means that they are missing key information for the approval of the takeoff or landing of flights.

The problem is resulting in travelers stuck due to indefinite flight delays:

Coming up on the 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫 mark of sitting on a grounded red eye flight from @flyLAXairport, with still no publicly available update from @FAANews…love it.

@AmericanAir you have an inside scoop yet on the NOTAM failure/restoration? 🤞🏻
Source

Anyone one else stranded? Our @united 🧑‍✈️ says there is a nation wide outage of FAA @FAANews computer systems.
Source

Users of big airlines like American Airlines are taking to social media to express their frustration with the situation. The growing reports are reflected in the Downdetector platform.

Right now, several travelers are receiving notifications of flight delays, such as the following:

Fortunately, the FAA is already working on restoring the normal operation of the ‘NOTAM’ system. However, there is still no ETA for it.

The FAA is working to restore its Notice to Air Missions System. We are performing final validation checks and reloading the system now.

Operations across the National Airspace System are affected. We will provide frequent updates as we make progress.
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We will be monitoring the situation to update this story as events unfold.

05:38 pm (IST): The FAA technicians continue to work on gradually restoring the ‘NOTAM’ system. There is their latest update on the situation:

Cleared Update No. 2 for all stakeholders:

The FAA is still working to fully restore the Notice to Air Missions system following an outage.

While some functions are beginning to come back on line, National Airspace System operations remain limited.
Source

06:07 pm (IST): In a recent tweet, FAA support has confirmed that they are still working to fully restore the Notice to Air Missions systems. Moreover, all domestic departures have been paused until 9 a.m. Eastern Time.

Update 3: The FAA is still working to fully restore the Notice to Air Missions system following an outage. The FAA has ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9 a.m. Eastern Time to allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information. (Source)

06:50 pm (IST): In a new Tweet, FAA support has further assured that they are working to resolve the issue and departures should resume at 9 am ET.

Update 4: The FAA is making progress in restoring its Notice to Air Missions system following an overnight outage. Departures are resuming at @EWRairport and @ATLairport due to air traffic congestion in those areas. We expect departures to resume at other airports at 9 a.m. ET.
Source

07:57 pm (IST): In another follow-up, the FAA confirmed that the ground stop has been lifted and air traffic operations have begun resuming normally.

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 ground stop has been lifted. We continue to look into the cause of the initial problem (Source)

08:35 am (IST): The FAA agency indicates that they are working to identify the causes of the problem to prevent it from recurring in the future.

We are working diligently to further pinpoint the causes of this issue and take all needed steps to prevent this kind of disruption from happening again.
Source

06:20 pm (IST): FAA has released a statement regarding the last week’s outage:

Featured Image: FAA on Twitter

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