HENRICO COUNTY, Va. — Thousands of passengers at Richmond International Airport (RIC) were waiting for hours for flights to resume following nationwide FAA computer outage Wednesday.
Flights nationwide were grounded by the FAA after they reported their Notice to Air Mission (NOTAM) system unexpectedly went down.
A helicopter pilot with CBS 6's sister station WTVF in Nashville shared that the system is a pilot’s electronic report they must read before takeoff.
The report includes vital information for pilots like runway issues or construction happening at the airport they’re arriving at or taking off from.
Some pilots were able to get paper copies of their NOTAM report and several flights were able to leave the runway. However, at RIC all flights were stuck on the ground.
“It was about an hour drive here, and maybe 45 minutes into that drive we realized that it will be delayed a couple of hours until 12 p.m. Our flight was supposed to leave at 10 a.m.,” said Ashley Mcleod, one of many affected by the sudden ground stop.
Mcleod was leaving RIC for a connecting flight in Philadelphia before flying to Phoenix, Arizona.
“It’s crazy it’s affected this many flights and this many people,” she stated.
RIC spokesperson Troy Bell said there were no issues at their airport when they were first notified about the system outage around 6 a.m.
The FAA lifted the grounding about two and a half hours later.
Approximately 120 to 150 flights leave Richmond every day, according to Bell.
The FAA said they are continuing to look into the cause of the initial problem.
President Joe Biden responded to the incident early Wednesday morning.
"I just spoke with (Transportation Secretary Pete) Buttigieg. They don't know what the cause is. But I was on the phone with him" Biden said. "I told them to report directly to me when they find out. Aircraft can still land safely, just not take off right now. They don't know what the cause of it is; they expect in a couple of hours, they'll have a good sense of what caused it and will respond at that time."
The White House said it has "no evidence" of this being caused by a cyberattack "at this point."
Just before 7 a.m. Eastern, there were nearly 1,200 delayed flights within, into or out of the United States, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.
Most delays were concentrated along the East Coast.
