More Than 8,000 Flights Delayed Across US After FAA System Outage

More than 8,000 flights within, into or out of the United States were delayed Wednesday (January 11) morning following an outage to a Federal Aviation Administration system, CNN reports.

The FAA temporarily halted all domestic flight departures from the U.S. after a failure to its Notice to Air Missions (NOTAMS), which provides pilots with pre-flight safety notices, overnight.

The order was lifted just before 9:00 a.m. ET, but caused a widespread of delays nationwide.

"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 FAA News Twitter account wrote. "The ground stop has been lifted. We continue to look into the cause of the initial problem."

A total of 8,228 delays within, into, or out of the U.S. were reported as of 2:25 ET on Wednesday, according to FlightAware.com.

President Joe Biden said he spoke with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and there was no immediate information regarding the outage Wednesday morning, which comes after previous aviation issues in recent weeks.

"I just spoke with Buttigieg," Biden said while leaving the White House via CNN. "They don't know what the cause is. But I was on the phone with him the last 10 minutes. I told them to report directly to me when they find out. Aircraft can still land safely, just not take off right now." 

"They don't know what the cause of it is," Biden added. "They expect in a couple of hours they'll have a good sense of what caused it and will respond at that time."

Last month, Southwest Airlines had canceled the majority of its scheduled flights on several days during and after the Christmas weekend as technical issues coincided with Winter Storm Elliott.

Southwest Airlines employees were unable to communicate with the airline due to technological issues, TWU Local 556 union president Lyn Montgomery told CNN's Pamela Brown on December 26.

Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson said the company's outdated scheduling software was the main cause for the massive cancellations -- which continued even after Winter Storm Elliott cleared in most parts of the country -- as some crew members were left stranded and Southwest's crew schedulers attempted to put together a new schedule, which was complicated by the Federal Aviation Administration's strict regulations.