Business Aviation News

US Ground Stop Impacts Business Aviation Operations

US Ground Stop Impacts Business Aviation Operations

A recent Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) failure in the US that forced the US Federal Aviation Administration to issue a ground stop to all aircraft that were due to depart from airports in the US, was caused by a corrupted file.

The NOTAM system is vital for aircraft operations as it includes the most up-to-date information on airports and airspace, which are not only used during the flight planning stage but also onboard aircraft during flights.

According to flight tracking website FlightAware, the ground stop delayed more than 10,000 flights and canceled 1,300 more, with Germany-based business aviation consultancy WingX saying that it has also affected more than 290 business aviation flights.

In a statement issued before the lifting of the ground stop, the FAA said that it had found a damaged database file, but that there was no indication that the file was deliberately corrupted. A White House spokesperson later Tweeted that the President had been briefed on the situation.

“Our preliminary work has traced the outage to a damaged database file. At this time, there is no evidence of a cyberattack. 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,” said the FAA statement.

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