The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Department of Transportation continue to investigate the causes of the computer glitch that led to the cancellation of more than 1,300 flight cancellations and more than 10,600 delays in the U.S. on Wednesday. White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the FAA itself said that, at the moment, "there is no evidence of a cyberattack" as the source of the problems, although they acknowledged that "we are not yet ready to rule it out."
Buttigieg uploaded a video to social media in the afternoon analyzing what he experienced at the country's airports throughout the day. As announced by the FAA early Wednesday, a failure in the Air Mission Notification System (NOTAM), led the agency to halt air traffic across the country as it was unable to ensure flight safety. This decision, according to the Secretary of Transportation, was justified by the Biden Administration's commitment to citizen safety. As a result, according to FlightAware data, 10,632 flights were delayed, while 1,353 flights were canceled.
Safety is always our first priority, and ensuring flight safety was the reason for this morning’s ground stop while the affected systems were restored and checked. As normal flight operations have resumed, FAA continues to assess the causes of the outage. pic.twitter.com/JhsYKBDney
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) January 11, 2023
"Err on the side of safety"
"Safety is always our first priority, and ensuring flight safety was the reason for this morning's ground stop while the affected systems were being restored and tested," Buttigieg explained in the release. Buttigieg also emphasized in the video release that "we will always err on the side of safety."
"That said, we also need to make sure we understand everything there is to understand about this situation so we can make sure a disruption like this doesn't happen again," he added. He included in the tweet that the FAA is still "assessing the causes of the disruption."
Biden ordered a thorough investigation
Hours earlier, Jean-Pierre indicated at a press conference that President Biden had been informed of the incident. According to the White House spokeswoman, "there is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the President directed DOT to conduct a full investigation into the causes." She also mentioned that the FAA would provide periodic updates throughout the day with more information.
The President has been briefed by the Secretary of Transportation this morning on the FAA system outage. There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the President directed DOT to conduct a full investigation into the causes. The FAA will provide regular updates.
— Karine Jean-Pierre (@PressSec) January 11, 2023
A cyberattack or a corrupted file?
In the latest updates provided by the agency, the FAA suggested that "a corrupted database file" was the source of the problem, and insisted that they haven't found any trace of a possible cyberattack.
We are working diligently to further pinpoint the causes of this issue and take all needed steps to prevent this kind of disruption from happening again. (2/2)
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023
