On Wednesday morning, travelers across the country faced widespread delays and cancellations stemming from a Federal Aviation Administration computer system outage. Luckily, private aviation is uniquely situated to deal with setbacks such as these and keep flyers on schedule. Read on to learn what took place and how private aviation solutions providers like Magellan Jets are equipped to handle issues like this FAA outage that commercial airlines cannot.
FAA SYSTEM OUTAGE CAUSES DELAYS, CANCELLATIONS
What Happened?
At 8:28 p.m. on Tuesday, January 10, the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system failed. NOTAMs are notices that convey important safety information about the nation’s airports which is needed by air crews before their flights can be dispatched; with the outage, no new NOTAMs were being processed and delivered to flight crews, so no commercial flights could be released.
By 7:15 a.m. Wednesday morning, the FAA announced a ground stop, or temporary halt, to all domestic departures until 9 a.m. as they worked to repair the outage. Departures in highly congested areas such as Atlanta and Newark resumed around 8:15 a.m., and the ground stop was lifted everywhere else shortly before 9 a.m.
While regular air traffic resumed, there were still thousands of delays and cancellations at airports around the country as a result of the morning’s issues. The FAA said they were still investigating the cause of the NOTAM outage.
Avoiding Delays & Cancellations With Private Aviation
At Magellan Jets, our operations team members were in constant, direct communication with operators and flight crews as the situation developed throughout the morning, and as a result, no Magellan flights were affected by the FAA outage—in fact, we had a flight depart from Bedford, Massachusetts at 8:40 a.m.
Wednesday morning highlighted one great advantage flying private has over flying commercial: the highly individualized focus each guest and trip receives. For private aviation, a large-scale, computerized system isn’t required to deliver safety information to pilots; with a simple phone call, a flight captain and dispatcher can jointly release an aircraft, sending passengers on their way. Our dedicated, 24/7 Flight Support Department was able to make those calls and keep our flights on track, giving each client the attention required to deliver excellence in the face of an unexpected obstacle.
Private aviation provides a higher level of travel certainty, especially when compared to commercial airlines’ chaotic summer and difficult holiday season. If you’re ready to experience that elevated service firsthand, click below to explore our full suite of private aviation solutions, from on-demand Charter to Private Jet Membership to Jet Card Ownership.
