Updated Feb 2, 2025 - Politics & Policy

FAA warning system outage leads to flight delays

Avery Lotz

A plane is parked with the control tower at the Reagan National Airport in the background. — The control tower at the Reagan National Airport after the crash of an American Airlines plane on the Potomac River on approach to the airport on Jan. 30 in Arlington, Virginia. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

A Federal Aviation Administration warning system is back online Sunday after a temporary outage that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said could trigger "residual delays"

The big picture: It is unclear if the outage was tied to the broad changes and deletions across federal sites, which led to several pages and datasets going dark.

Duffy said in a Saturday night statement shared to social media that the Federal Aviation Administration was working to restore the temporary outage of the primary Notice to Air Missions system, which alerts pilots about hazards or "abnormal" information that would impact flight operations.
The FAA said Sunday morning that the "[t]he NOTAM system is online and operational," and that the agency continues to investigate "the root cause" of the outage.

The latest: Duffy said on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday that the "lead system" is now "online and working."

There was "minimal disruption" as a result of the outage, he said, adding he wants to "expedite" fixes to the NOTAM system, which he described as "an old system that needs to be upgraded."

Catch up quick: Duffy on Saturday said there was no impact on the National Airspace System because "a backup system is in place."

By the numbers: There have been 1,133 delays within, into, or out of the country as of Sunday around 11:10am ET, per air traffic tracker Flight Aware.

There have been 75 cancellations within, into, or out of the U.S.

Zoom in: The outage comes days after the fatal midair collision of a regional jet and Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, D.C., the deadliest air carrier crash in the U.S. since November 2001.

Flashback: This is not the first time the Notice to Air Missions system, which communicates hazards like closed runways or airspace restrictions in real time, has gone down.

In 2023, the FAA ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures after an outage.

Go deeper: What the data says about Trump's DEI air crash claims

Editor's note: This story has been updated with a statement from the FAA.

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FAA warning system outage leads to flight delays

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