System Outage at FAA causes flight delays at Salisbury Regional Airport
SALISBURY, Md- A early morning failure Wednesday in the FAA’s communication System NOTAM, resulted in flights being grounded between 6:30 am and 9 am causing delays throughout the day across the US.
Travelers at Salisbury Regional Airport arrived to find flights delayed, and with uncertainty as to the timing for connecting flights in Philadelphia and Charlotte.
“I spent 70 dollars ubering to [Salisbury Regional Airport] my flight to Pheonix left on time but this was delayed so now I am ubering to PHL airport to make the next connection, I’m out almost 400 dollars and I’m still not on a plane,” said Traveler Judy Wily.
Wily wasn’t the only traveler facing delays.
“My first flight was supposed to leave an hour ago and it’s gotten delayed to an hour from now so I’ve lost about two hours on this flight,’ said Traveler Clint Lauderdale, who was traveling to Alabama by way of Charlotte.
Salisbury Regional Airport Director Tony Rudy tells 47ABC the software was a crucial part of planes being able to be tracked and communicate.
“It is pretty much everything soup to nuts related to flying from an airport to another airport so its really critical for the pilots to have and so the FAA decided to ground the flights because this was not available,” he said adding “This is a nationwide system where both airports and FAA operations people and other groups go to find information for pilots to rely on such as runway closures, taxiway closures or construction, any navigational aids or issues.”
Rudy says he hopes the delay was uniform across the board for most passengers, and hopes that the disruption can be limited to just one day.
“People are going to see delays all day long hopefully just today and hopefully by tomorrow they will recover but if your flight is grounded for hours first thing in the morning everything is going to get backed up so expect delays from the original departure time and connecting times,” he said.
There were more than 7,300 delays and 1,100 cancellations midday, according to tracking website Flight Aware.
