A computer glitch that saw all planes across America grounded for 90 minutes will continue to cause travel chaos in the coming days.
Thousands of flights across the US were cancelled or delayed after a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) program broke down that generated alerts called 'Notice to Air Missions' (NOTAMs).
NOTAMs are designed to filter safety information through to pilots and other crew.
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The White House on January 11 said it has seen no evidence of a cyberattack being the cause for the mass system outage at the FAA that has caused hundreds of flights to be delayed.
US President Joe Biden has directed the Department of Transportation to conduct an investigation into the matter.
Officials told Reuters the nationwide mass grounding is the first in two decades, and has been compared to how the sector reacted in the hours following the September 11 terror attacks in 2001.
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FlightAware advised Reuters more than 8,200 flights have been delayed so far and over 1,200 flights were cancelled.
As per AP, airports in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta are now seeing nearly half of their flights delayed as a result of the nationwide glitch.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg revealed the error will have an ongoing knock-on effect in the wake of the incident.
"There was a systems issue overnight that led to a ground stop because of the way safety information was moving through the system," he said at a press conference, as per AP.
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"That was resolved, which allowed the ground stop to be lifted at 9 this morning, but through the day we’re going to see the effects of that rippling through the system."
The knock-on effect will likely impact the 21,000 flights that were scheduled to take off in the US on Wednesday.
But the glitch will have broader implications for global travel, with about 1,840 international flights expected to fly to the USA, as per aviation data firm Cirium via AP.
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NOTAM notices include information about weather, runway closures/construction and other crucial information that could affect the flight before the plane leaves the ground.
The system broke down late on Tuesday evening (January 10) and was not fixed until 9 am the following morning.
Flights have since resumed.
Rachel Lang