More than 7,300 flights were delayed and 1,100 canceled due to an Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) system outage. Now that the immediate problem has been fixed, there’s a travel bottleneck which officials say could cause delays through at least Thursday, if not longer. One issue airlines are facing is trying to get planes in and out of crowded gates, which is causing further delays. Crew time limit rules may also play a factor.
A trade group representing the U.S. travel industry, including airlines, called the FAA system failure “catastrophic.” The cause of the problem with a pilot-alerting system was unclear, but U.S. officials said they had found no evidence of a cyberattack.
The outage occurred at a typically slow time after the holiday travel season, yet overall demand is strong as travel continues to recover to near pre-pandemic level.
