Houston Hobby, Bush Intercontinental Flights Delayed by US Air Travel Chaos After Computer Crash

The Houston Airport system tells you that your flight will be delayed on Wednesday if you are departing from Bush Intercontinental Airport or Hobby Airport.

The delays are the result of the Federal Aviation Administration suspending all flights to the US earlier in the day due to a critical system failure, Houston Airport System spokesman Augusto Bernal said.

“This is a good example of how the airline industry is interconnected; it’s a big network,” he said.

That’s why he suggests that you double-check that your flight is actually on schedule.

“If you are flying out today, it would be a good idea to check with your airline on the status of your flight, is it still available or on time,” he said.

The average flight delay from Hobby on a Wednesday morning was an hour and a half; in Bush it was an hour.

It comes just weeks after Southwest Airlines suspended most of its flights around the country over the holidays – also due to a technical glitch.

The White House initially said there was no evidence of a cyberattack behind the disruption that disrupted the travel plans of millions of passengers. President Joe Biden said Wednesday morning that he had directed the Department of Transportation to investigate.

Whatever the cause, the glitch showed just how much the world’s largest economy depends on air travel and how much air travel depends on an outdated computer system called Air Mission Notification, or NOTAM.

Before flying, pilots should review NOTAMs that list potential adverse impacts on flights, from runway construction to the possibility of icing. The system used to work by phone and pilots called dedicated flight service stations for information, but now it has moved online.

The NOTAM system went down late Tuesday evening, causing more than 1,000 flights to be canceled and 7,000 flights delayed by Wednesday afternoon, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

Chaos is expected to grow as backups are made. More than 21,000 flights are scheduled to depart the US today, mostly domestic flights, and about 1,840 international flights are expected to operate from the US, according to aircraft maker Cirium.

At the airports of Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta, 30% to 40% of flights were delayed.

“We’re going to see ripple effects from these morning delays on the system throughout the day,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in an interview with CNN. “Now we have to understand how this could have happened in the first place. Why didn’t the usual duplications that wouldn’t let it be so devastating prevent it from being devastating this time around.”

Longtime aviation insiders could not recall a shutdown of this magnitude caused by a technological glitch. Some compared it to the closure of airspace across the country following the September 2001 attacks.

“There have been local issues here and there from time to time, but historically it is quite important,” said Tim Campbell, former senior vice president of air operations at American Airlines and now a consultant in Minneapolis.

Campbell said the FAA has long been concerned about the technology, not just the NOTAM system.

“Most of their systems are old mainframe systems that are generally reliable but outdated,” he said.

John Cox, a former airline pilot and aviation security expert, said there has been talk in the aviation industry for years about trying to modernize the NOTAM system, but he doesn’t know the age of the servers the FAA uses.

He couldn’t tell if a cyberattack was possible.

“I have been flying for 53 years. I have never heard of a system failing like this,” Cox said. So something unusual has happened.

According to FAA bulletins, the NOTAM system went down Tuesday at 8:28 pm ET, preventing new or revised notices from being sent to pilots. The FAA resorted to a telephone hotline to fly at night, but as daytime traffic increased, this overloaded the backup telephone system.

The FAA ordered all outbound flights to land early Wednesday morning, affecting all passenger and cargo flights.

Some medical flights could be cleared, and the shutdown did not affect military operations or mobility.

US Air Mobility Command flights were not affected.

Biden said Wednesday morning that Buttigieg briefed him.

“I just spoke to Buttigieg. They don’t know what is the reason. But I talked to him on the phone for about 10 minutes,” Biden said. “I told him to report directly to me when they found out.

Buttigieg said on CNN that the order to stop all outbound flights was given out of great caution, but said massive disruptions to U.S. air traffic were unacceptable.

“We need to design a system that doesn’t have that kind of vulnerability,” Buttigieg said.

Julia McPherson was on a United Airlines flight from Sydney to Los Angeles on Wednesday when she became aware of potential delays.

“While I was in the air, I received news from a friend of mine who was also traveling overseas that there was a power outage,” said McPherson, who was returning to Florida from Hobart, Tasmania. After she lands in Los Angeles, she still has a Denver connection on her flight to Jacksonville, Florida.

She said there were no announcements of a problem with the FAA during the flight.

McPherson said she was already facing a delay in her travel because her original flight from Melbourne to San Francisco was canceled and she rebooked a flight from Sydney to Los Angeles.

Similar stories happened in Chicago, Washington, Atlanta and other major US airports.

European flights to the US appear to have been largely unaffected. Carriers from Ireland’s Aer Lingus to Germany’s Lufthansa said it did not affect their schedules.

It was the latest headache for U.S. travelers who faced holiday flight cancellations due to winter storms and disruptions in staffing technology at Southwest Airlines. They also faced long lines, lost luggage, cancellations and delays throughout the summer as travel demand soared due to the COVID-19 pandemic and faced staff cuts at airports and airlines in the US and Europe.