Biggest collapse in 20 years: U.S. air travel disruption could last days

The US aviation sector is struggling to get back to normal after a nationwide ground shutdown. Air travel was halted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the early hours of Jan. 11 due to a glitch in a system that provides pilots with pre-flight safety alerts. Reuters.

Photo: IStock

According to FlightAware, to date, more than 8700 flights have been delayed and more than 1200 cancelled. It was the first national flight ban in about two decades, industry officials said. Many officials compared this to what happened after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

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The total number of flights continued to rise, but airline officials expressed confidence that normal operations could largely return by January 12, barring new problems.

The cause of the problem with the pilot alert system was unclear, but US officials said they had not yet found evidence of a cyberattack. U.S. Transportation Chief Pete Buttigieg said a problem with safety messages caused the crash.

“The biggest focus is on technical issues to understand exactly how this happened, why the redundancy and backups built into the system could not prevent this level of failure,” Buttigieg said.

He said the ground stop was "the right choice" to make sure messages were getting through correctly and there was no direct evidence of a cyberattack.

Buttigieg told reporters that the backup system went live on January 11, but questions were raised about the system's performance, leading to a full system reboot. This prompted the FAA to halt flights around 7:30 am.

The FAA said the system, which provides so-called "Air Mission Notices" with safety messages to pilots and others, went down around 15:30 pm ET Jan. 11. This meant that new messages could not be processed.

The outage occurred during the quiet season following holiday travel. But demand remains strong as travel continues to recover to near pre-pandemic levels.

The outage could affect traffic until January 13, Capt. Chris Torres, vice president of the Pilots Association, said.

“This thing was launched at 9 a.m. ET. This does not mean that the problem disappeared at 9 am. It caused a ripple effect,” Torres said.

One of the challenges airlines are facing is trying to pick up and drop off passengers at overcrowded gates, causing further delays. Crew time limit rules may also play a role.

At the airport in Greenville, South Carolina, Justin Kennedy canceled a business trip to nearby Charlotte. He described his confusion as the airline staff did not know what the FAA was saying and many passengers were initially unaware of the delays.

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“I was sitting in the Chick-fil-A dining area, which had a good view of the TSA exit,” said the 30-year-old information technology employee. “I saw at least four people running towards the gate because they thought they were going to miss their flight. But the flights were cancelled."

catastrophic failure

US airline customers have few alternatives. The travel distance is too long, and the country's passenger railway network is weaker than in other countries.

A trade group representing the US travel industry, including airlines, called the failure of the FAA system "catastrophic."

“America's transportation network is in desperate need of a major overhaul,” said U.S. Travel Association President Jeff Freeman. “We call on federal policymakers to modernize our critical air travel infrastructure.”

The shutdown appears to have had a limited impact on transatlantic routes, with European carriers including Lufthansa, Air France, Iberia and British Airways saying flights to and from the United States continue. Virgin Atlantic has warned that some flights may be delayed.

Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, a Democrat, said the commission would investigate. Republican Senator Ted Cruz called the failure "completely unacceptable" and the issue should lead to reforms as part of the FAA's reauthorization due to be completed by September.

Shares of US carriers rebounded after the market opened as flights resumed. The S&P 500 (.SPLRCAIR) airline index rose 1%.

The operational crisis in the Southwest at the end of last year detained thousands of people. A severe winter storm just before Christmas, combined with the Texas carrier's outdated technology, resulted in more than 16 flight cancellations.

DOT, the FAA's parent agency, criticized Southwest's failures and demanded that the airline compensate passengers. Buttigieg on January 11 rejected the FAA's offer to reimburse travelers for delays caused by power outages.

On January 2, the FAA encountered another major computer problem that resulted in significant flight delays to Florida.

According to Cirium, 11 flights from the US were scheduled to depart on January 21, with a capacity of nearly 464 million passengers.

Parcel delivery companies FedEx (FDX.N), United Parcel Service (UPS.N) and DHL (DPWGn.DE), which rely heavily on aircraft, said they experienced minimal disruption on Jan. 11.

Separately, on January 11 afternoon, NAV Canada air traffic control reported an outage of approximately 90 minutes on a similar messaging system used in Canada. But he said the problem did not cause flight delays. The agency said it does not believe its shutdown was related to the FAA's failure, but is investigating.

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Ria Malhotra, a 29-year-old doctor from Weehawken, New Jersey, was scheduled to fly from Newark to Las Vegas for a medical conference, but her flight was first delayed and then rescheduled.

“I just don’t want to fly anymore because I feel like flight delays are the norm rather than the exception,” she said.

As ForumDaily wrote earlier:

• All flights in the US have been suspended. due to failure in a computer program.

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