Dayton travelers see flights canceled, delayed after FAA computer outage

Federal Aviation Administration lifts ground stop after more than a thousand delays across the U.S.
Shayla Moore waits at the Dayton International Airport for her mother to pick her up after her flight was canceled early Wednesday morning on Jan. 11, 2023. MARSHALL GORBY\STAFF

Shayla Moore waits at the Dayton International Airport for her mother to pick her up after her flight was canceled early Wednesday morning on Jan. 11, 2023. MARSHALL GORBY\STAFF

Shayla Moore was supposed to fly back home from Dayton Wednesday after visiting for her grandmother’s 91st birthday. But a Dayton International Airport worker said her flight was canceled because the computers were down.

“She told us that the flight was canceled and if we needed to be rebooked then we could either go back down to ticketing or to see her at the desk and she was going to rebook us to whenever the next available was based on our destination,” Moore said.

Moore’s wasn’t the only flight canceled.

A computer outage at the Federal Aviation Administration resulted in thousands of delayed flights throughout the U.S.

There were more than 8,116 delayed flights within, into or out of the United States, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.

Things were slowly returning to normal by Wednesday afternoon. In Dayton, there were five departing flights and four incoming flights delayed as of 2:15 p.m. Four flights had been canceled.

It wasn’t clear whether all the cancellations or delays were the result of the computer outage. Airport officials advised travelers to check with their airlines for their status of their flight.

Moore was rebooked on a flight departing Thursday morning.

The Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport had 19 departures and 38 arrivals delayed as of Wednesday afternoon. Four flights were cancelled.

The outage started late Tuesday, resulting in thousands of delayed and cancelled flights. Just before 9 a.m. Wednesday, the FAA said normal air traffic operations were gradually returning after an overnight outage to its Notice to Air Missions System. It also announced a ground stop pausing all domestic flights had been lifted.

“We continue to look into the cause of the initial problem,” the FAA posted to Twitter.

NOTAMs used to be available through a hotline but that was phased out with the internet. The alerts span from mundane information about construction at airports to urgent flight restrictions or broken equipment. All aircraft are required to route through the system, including commercial and military flights.

The White House said initially there was no evidence that a cyberattack was behind the outage, the Associated Press reported. The Department of Transportation will investigate what caused the outage.

AP White House Correspondent Zeke Miller contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.