A computer outage at the Federal Aviation Administration disrupted flights Wednesday morning across the country, including at airports in South Florida.
The outage of the FAA's Notice to Air Missions System — caused by a corrupted file — happened overnight into the morning. The system provides safety information to flight crews, so the outage prevented planes from taking off.
"It’s crazy that one little thing can affect so many people in so many significant ways," said traveler Melina Simonpietrt, who was at Miami International Airport hoping to catch her flight to Grenada.
According to FlightAware, there were 400 total delays and 60 cancelations at MIA as of Wednesday afternoon. At Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, there were 296 delays and 15 cancelations. Those numbers have fluctuated throughout the day as flights slowly resumed.
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Simonpietri was just trying to get to Grenada in time for her spring semester when the FAA outage put a wrench in her travel plans.
"They just canceled my flight," she said. "I got a notification when I was doing security, and it said my flight was delayed to 1 p.m. — and then no, your flight is canceled. So now I can’t get on a flight to Grenada until next week.“
Local
A group of coworkers took a redeye from Seattle to do a girls' trip in Costa Rica. Now they’re stuck in Miami, waiting for hours for their luggage.
“We were headed to Costa Rica, and we got here — and then our flight was canceled," Blair Stock said. "So now we have to go to two other places before we can get to our destination, so we’re not getting there until Friday, and we were supposed to be there in an hour.”
President Joe Biden confirmed he was in contact with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday, and the Department of Transportation worked to determine the cause of the outage.
The Associated Press reported that more than 21,000 flights were scheduled to take off in the U.S. on Wednesday, and 1,840 international flights were expected to fly into the U.S.
