The Federal Aviation Administration has halted flights to and from Raleigh-Durham International Airport on Wednesday morning due to problems with the nation’s air traffic control system, according to the News Observer.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered all airlines to pause all domestic departures while it works to restore what’s known as the Notice to Air Missions system which provides crucial flight and safety information to pilots prior to takeoff.
A short time before 7am the FAA said that it has been able to restore some of the system’s functions, but then stated 15 minutes later that they needed more time and thus ordered departing flights to remain grounded.
The FAA said flights currently in the sky are safe to land explaining that pilots check the NAM system before they take off to learn about any closed runways, equipment outages and other potential hazards along their flight route.
While speaking to reporters, President Joe Biden said the FAA doesn’t know what caused the Notice to Air Missions system to fail – “They expect in a couple of hours they’ll have a good sense of what caused it and will respond at that time,” Biden said.
At around 8:15am the FAA announced that departures were resuming at Newark Liberty and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta international airports “due to air traffic congestion in those areas,” and that it expected to resume flights from other airports at 9 a.m.
