MADISON, Wis. — For the first time since the Sept. 11 terrorist attack more than two decades ago, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded all U.S. flights Wednesday morning due to a computer system failure.
Notice to Air Missions, the critical FAA computer software that sends alerts to pilots about conditions that could affect the safety of flights, crashed at around 5 a.m. local time, grounding thousands of flights nationwide. Pilots know the layout of the airports where they’re landing, but when conditions change, a NOTAM alerts them. It is a vital communication tool that is separate from air traffic controllers.
“The problem is that if there’s a change to how it’s supposed to be, if there’s construction going on in the airport, if a runway is closed, if there are cranes in the area, if certain lighting systems are out of service, those are all changes to how it’s supposed to be, and those changes are communicated through a NOTAM,” said Michael Riechers, Dane County Regional Airport’s director of marketing and communications.
NOTAM is completely separate from Air Traffic Control. But why couldn’t they make due until NOTAM was fixed?
“There are a variety of ways that information can be communicated, but NOTAMs are the standard practice and can be done in high volume; any number of people can look at the same NOTAM, as opposed to a back-and-forth conversation,” Riechers explained.
The halt was lifted around 8 a.m., but that didn’t help the Semrow family at the airport Wednesday. It meant part of Isaac Semrow’s 20-person group’s planes took off, but the FAA’s communication jammed their vacation plans.
“We’ve got people in Appleton, people in Atlanta, some of them here in Madison, and a few people we don’t really know where they are,” Semrow told News 3 now.
He did make it to Chicago and told News 3 Now that he was told his next stop was Chicago but didn’t know anything more.
When planes were ordered to the ground, two flights stopped in Madison. A flight from Cincinnati to Grand Rapids diverted to Madison, as did a flight from Grand Rapids to Minneapolis. The grounding also delayed multiple flights out of Madison, which impacted them all day.
“I expect some ripple effects throughout the day as they try to catch up from those delays,” Riechers predicted.
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