FAA STATEMENT 7:15 p.m. EST

A preliminary FAA review of last week’s outage of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system determined that contract personnel unintentionally deleted files while working to correct synchronization between the live primary database and a backup database. The agency has so far found no evidence of a cyber-attack or malicious intent. The FAA continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding the outage.

The FAA made the necessary repairs to the system and has taken steps to make the NOTAM system more resilient. The agency is acting quickly to adopt any other lessons learned in our efforts to ensure the continuing robustness of the nation’s air traffic control system.

January 11, 2023

FAA STATEMENT 6:30 p.m. EST

The FAA is continuing a thorough review to determine the root cause of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system outage. Our preliminary work has traced the outage to a damaged database file. At this time, there is no evidence of a cyber attack. The FAA is working diligently to further pinpoint the causes of this issue and take all needed steps to prevent this kind of disruption from happening again.

FAA STATEMENT 8:50 a.m. EST

Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the United States following an overnight outage to the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system that provides safety information to flight crews. The ground stop has been lifted.

The agency continues to look into the cause of the initial problem.

FAA STATEMENT 8:15 a.m. EST

The FAA is making progress in restoring its Notice to Air Missions system following an overnight outage.

Departures are resuming at Newark Liberty (EWR) and Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson (ATL) airports due to air traffic congestion in those areas.

We expect departures to resume at other airports at 9 a.m. Eastern Time.

FAA STATEMENT 7:15 a.m. EST

The FAA is still working to fully restore the Notice to Air Missions system following an outage.

The FAA has ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9 a.m. Eastern Time to allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information.