The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced Saturday that a warning system outage could cause flight delays throughout the United States, according to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy.
“The primary NOTAM [Notice to Air Missions] system is experiencing a temporary outage, but there is currently no impact to the National Airspace System because a backup system is in place,” Duffy said in an X post.
“NOTAMs provide updates about anything that may effect the safety of a flight,” Duffy continued. “All active NOTAMs were available until the time of the outage. The agency activated its contingency system to supplement and support preflight briefings and continue flight operations.”
The transportation secretary went on to say, “The [Federal Aviation Administration] is working to fully restore the system, and there may be some residual delays tomorrow morning.”
“Please check with your airline for updates. We are investigating the root cause and we will provide updates,” Duffy added.
“FAA has set up a hotline to communicate with aviation stakeholders and will send notices every 30 minutes with updates on the system’s status,” the transportation secretary concluded in his X post.
On Sunday, Duffy told CNN that the “lead system” is now “online and working, adding there was “minimal disruption” as a result of the outage, and that he wants to “expedite” fixes to the NOTAM system.
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Duffy also referred to the NOTAM system — which alerts pilots to hazards in real time, such as closed runways or airspace restrictions that would affect flight operations — as “an old system that needs to be upgraded.”
While this comes days after a Black Hawk helicopter crashed into a regional American Airlines aircraft in Washington, D.C., Duffy noted in his Saturday post that there was “no impact to the National Airspace System because a backup system is in place.”
There have been 657 flight delays and 64 cancellations in the Unites States as of Sunday at around 9:20 a.m. Eastern, according to the air traffic tracker Flight Aware.
This is not the first time the NOTAM system has gone down. The FAA also ordered a pause on all domestic airline departures after an outage in 2023.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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