Thousands of flights delayed in US after planes grounded

AROUND one million airline passengers suffered delays and cancellations yesterday as an IT glitch grounded flights across the US.

More than 6,000 flights were delayed and nearly 1,000 cancelled in one of the worst outages since 9/11, according to the Flightaware website, after a glitch took down a pilot-alerting system overnight.

The chaos caused delays for a string of UK flights, with Heathrow the worst affected airport. American Airlines suffered a total of eight delays due to the issues, with the majority of these between 30 minutes and an hour.

However, passengers on one of its Miami flights faced a delay of more than four hours, while one of its flights to Phoenix had to be cancelled after staff could not work after exceeding their shift allocation period.

Disruption lasted for around seven hours as officials scrambled to investigate an overnight outage to the “Notice to Air Missions” system that provides safety information to flight crews.

On the assumption that planes carry an average 150 passengers, the problems mean around one million customers were affected.

Sarah-jane Grace, who was visiting Las Vegas for a fan convention, said being stuck in London had left her “tired and frustrated” after having to wait for more than seven hours at Heathrow, before departing on a rebooked British Airways flight.

She added: “Ultimately, the airlines don’t seem to care about the disruption to plans, as long as we arrive eventually.”

Only one Virgin Atlantic flight from New York to London is believed to have been delayed.

BA said that its flights to and from the US had continued as planned and recommended that passengers check its website for flight information. Analysis of Heathrow departures suggested that some BA departures had been delayed.

Elsewhere, the country’s other airports seemed to escape relatively unscathed. Gatwick reported only one delay of an hour on a flight to New York, while Manchester reported minimal impact to its flights.

US officials said there was no evidence of a cyber attack – though President Joe Biden had been briefed on the situation. White House press secretary Karine Jean-pierre said: “There is no evidence of a cyber-attack at this point, but the President directed the Department of Transportation to conduct a full investigation into the causes.”