WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Palm Beach International Airport was among the hundreds of airports across the country impacted by flight delays and cancellations Wednesday after a major government system outage.
There were 12 flights canceled and 73 delays at PBIA as of 4 p.m., according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. Six of the canceled flights were on Delta while the other six were on American Airlines.
Andrew Weisman was one of the many passengers impacted by the delays at PBIA.
"We've been delayed now several times," Delta Airlines passenger Andrew Weisman said Wednesday while stranded at the airport. "I'm due at work very early tomorrow morning, and I wanted to get a head start on that, so, it's disruptive and not fun. Flying has just really become very unpredictable and really not a terrific experience for the average consumer."
American Airlines flights were also impacted by the technical outage. Passenger Jim Johns told WPTV that he took an hour-long Uber from Vero Beach in the early morning hours, only to find out his flight was canceled.
"I was on my way to the airport thinking my flight was on time, and then all of a sudden it was canceled," Johns said.
By the time he was notified, he said the first flight to his destination was the next morning.
"U.S. domestic, you want to avoid it. That's the generally the accepted wisdom," JetBlue passenger Mark Prichard said. "It's bad ... compared to other countries."
There were a total of 7,974 delays within, into or out of the United States on Wednesday to go with the 1,198 cancellations, FlightAware said.
The White House initially said that there was no evidence of a cyberattack behind the outage that ruined travel plans for millions of passengers. President Joe Biden said Wednesday morning that he's directed the Department of Transportation to investigate.
"The bottom line is there is no doubt the historical nature of our grid system or technology, unfortunately, does make us extremely vulnerable to these types of system failures," attorney and former FBI agent Stuart Kaplan said.
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Whatever the cause, the outage revealed how dependent the world's largest economy is on air travel, and how dependent air travel is on an antiquated computer system called the Notice to Air Missions, or NOTAM.
Before commencing a flight, pilots are required to consult NOTAMs, which list potential adverse impacts on flights, from runway construction to the potential for icing. The system used to be telephone-based, with pilots calling dedicated flight service stations for the information, but has moved online.
Safety is always the top priority, but leaving millions of travelers stranded and delayed to their destinations is not okay.
— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) January 11, 2023
I expect @FAANews and @SecretaryPete to immediately provide a FULL briefing to Congress on what happened and how they will ensure it NEVER happens again.
U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., tweeted that he wanted a full briefing to Congress to ensure the problem doesn't happen again.
The NOTAM system broke down late Tuesday, leading to more than 1,100 flight cancelations and 7,700 delayed flights by midday Wednesday, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.
The chaos is expected to grow as backups compound. More than 21,000 flights were scheduled to take off in the U.S. Wednesday, mostly domestic trips, and about 1,840 international flights expected to fly to the U.S., according to aviation data firm Cirium.
Airports in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta were seeing between 30% and 40% of flights delayed.
"We are going to see the ripple effects from that, this morning’s delays through the system during the day," said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in an interview on CNN. "Now we have to understand how this could have happened in the first place. Why the usual redundancies that would stop it from being that disruptive did not stop it from being disruptive this time."
Kyle Potter of ThriftyTraveler.com said NOTAM gives pilots and air traffic controllers vital info on flight plans, weather and runway information.
"I think people need to keep in mind these systems are very complex that all it takes is for one thing to go wrong within this complex software system — that every airline in the country and every air traffic control system relies upon — for the whole thing to come crashing down," Potter said.
All of this comes on the heels of the holiday meltdown experienced by Southwest Airlines during the last week of the year that left passengers stranded for days.