FAA system outage causes thousands of flight delays and cancellations across the US

INA - SOURCES 


The airline industry has slowly begun to resume service after a Federal Aviation Administration system outage caused thousands of flight delays and cancellations across the United States Wednesday.

The FAA briefly halted all domestic flight departures across the United States Wednesday morning, lifting the ground stop around 9 a.m. ET after it restored a system that provides pilots with pre-flight safety notices.

But airlines continued to delay or cancel flights because of ongoing congestion.

By midday Wednesday, the FAA's website was still showing ground delays and ground stops at some airports.

The Chicago Department of Aviation said ground stops at O'Hare and Midway had been lifted but "residual delays or cancellations" are likely.

Major US carriers including United Airlines, Delta and American Airlines all said they had grounded flights in response to the situation. United and Delta have issued travel waivers in response to the outage. American Airlines also said its customers could rebook their flights Wednesday and Thursday without additional fees.

FlightAware, which tracks delays and cancellations, showed 8,609 flights to, from and within the United States as being delayed as of 3:30 p.m. ET, and 1,258 flights canceled.