How many Atlanta airport cancellations, delays are there following FAA system outage?

ATLANTA - Hundreds of flights at Atlanta's airport were delayed or cancelled on Wednesday following a nationwide Federal Aviation Administration outage that triggered a temporary ground stop of all domestic flights.

A tweet from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport's official account said airport officials were in contact with the FAA to "ensure there is minimal impact to operations." The tweet added that passengers should monitor updates from their airline for the latest information about flight delays and cancellations.

Airline employees worked to bounce back after the system error, but not before customers felt the brunt of it.

"The crazy thing is now when flights don't get delayed or something doesn't happen, that's like hitting the lottery," said Joe Bajzath.

Bajzath was one of the thousands of unlucky flyers Wednesday whose plane left late. His flight to Newark was delayed over an hour.

"You should expect a delay now," he said.

Flight delays continued to increase late Wednesday afternoon even after departures resumed in Atlanta by 9 a.m. 

According to FlightAware, at least 800 flights into and out of Hartsfield-Jackson were delayed and more than 60 were canceled. Those flight disruptions came after the FAA ordered a ground stop Wednesday morning when a vital computer system that provides safety information to flight crews failed.

FAA DEALS WITH NATIONWIDE SYSTEM OUTAGE

The FAA said it ordered all airlines to pause all domestic departures to "allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information." The FAA lifted the ground stop at 8:50 a.m.

A statement from the FAA noted an issue with NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions), a system that sends out critical information to pilots and other flight operations personnel about potential hazards along a route. The alerts span from mundane information about construction at airports to urgent flight restrictions or broken equipment.

President Joe Biden said "we don’t know" and told reporters he’s directed the Department of Transportation to investigate the cause of the disruption.

Biden said he had just been briefed by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who told him they still had not identified what went wrong.

By Wednesday evening, Buttigieg tweeted that the issue was traced "to a damaged database file, with no evidence of a cyber attack." He said the FAA would continue its investigation to pinpoint the sources and figure out a way to make sure this kind of error never happens again.

How long are flights grounded?

At 8:50 a.m. the FAA stated normal air traffic operation resumed across the U.S.

The ground stop was lifted.

In Atlanta, departures resumed shortly after 9 a.m.

Atlanta airport cancellations, delays

"It's certainly been many years, if not longer since we've had this kind of a nationwide ground stop," said Kyle Potter.  

Potter covers the aviation industry and is the executive editor at Thrifty Traveler. He says while the system is back online the outage could have lingering issues.

"This is another reminder of just how complex it is running a nationwide airspace system, let alone a single airline, but also just how fragile it can be," he said.

As airlines work to get back to normal, the delays are leaving flyers frustrated.

"We have somewhere to be, we want to be there early morning to get to our family," said Joyce Byron. "This is frustrating."

The FAA is now looking into the cause of the initial problem. At this point, they do not believe it was a cyber-attack.

Delta flight cancellations, delays

At around 12:50 p.m., FlightAware live data showed there were 1,095 delayed and about 58 cancelled Delta Air Lines flights nationwide. 

The airline told passengers to use the Delta Fly app for updates on their flights.

FOX TV Digital contributed to this report.