WASHINGTON.- The government of Joe Biden follow closely the mistake in a key system of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA, for its acronym in English) that paralyzed flights in various parts of the country on Wednesday morning and investigates its causes, while “For the moment” rules out that it is a cyberattack.
“There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this time, but the president has ordered the Department of Transportation to conduct a full investigation into the causes,” indicated the spokeswoman for the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre, who added that Biden had been informed on the subject by the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg.
Biden himself referred to the issue this Wednesday in a contact with journalists when he left the White House. “I just spoke with Buttigieg. They don’t know what the cause is. But I was on the phone with him for about 10 minutes,” said the president. “I told him to report to me directly when they find out. Air traffic may still land safely, but not take off at this time. We do not know what is the cause of this”, he insisted.
“We continue to investigate the cause,” assured, for its part, the FAA.
“I was in contact with the FAA this morning about an outage that affected a key system for providing safety information to pilots. The FAA is working to quickly and safely resolve this issue so air traffic can resume normal operations and will continue to provide updates,” Buttigieg tweeted earlier.
The chair of the Senate committee in charge of transportation, Maria Cantwell, also warned that a commission will examine the causes of the problems. “The public needs a resilient air transportation system”, he said in a statement.
The FAA suspended all domestic flight departures until 9 Eastern time (11 in Argentina), in order to repair the failure that affected its systems, the agency indicated through social networks. At that time, takeoffs began to resume progressively. The exceptions were the airports of Newark Liberty (a western suburb of New York) and Atlanta, where they resumed earlier to avoid heavy traffic congestion.
“The FAA continues to work to fully restore the (air…) information system following the outage,” the agency said in a statement, adding: “While some functions are beginning to come back online, National air system operations remain limited”.
More than 4,300 flights were delayed and more than 800 were canceled for 9.30 (local time).
Most of the incidents were concentrated on the East Coast of the country, but later they spread to the west. International flights arriving at Miami International Airport continued to land, but all departures were delayed from 6:30 a.m. local time, airport spokesman Greg Chin said.
The FAA explained in a tweet that it was working to restore what is known as Air Mission Notification System (Notam).
“We are performing final validation checks and rebooting the system,” the agency said. “Operations throughout US airspace are affected.”
Before starting a flight, pilots should consult the Notam system, where incidents that may affect flights are reported, from the construction of a runway to the possibility of icing and other routine information.
Notam used to be available through a phone line, but it was phased out with the internet. Alerts range from routine information about airport works to urgent flight restrictions or broken equipment.
Service interruption may cause widespread disorders. All aircraft must pass through the system, including commercial and military flights.
The agency said it would provide frequent updates as progress is made.
Agencies AP and AFP
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