FAA NOTAM System Failure — US National Ground Stop

On January 11, 2023, the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system, which distributes critical safety information to pilots and airline operations, failed before the morning departure rush. Unable to distribute NOTAMs reliably, the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop that halted all US domestic departures.

The ground stop lasted approximately 90 minutes, the first such nationwide halt since September 11, 2001. By the time flights resumed, the disruption had created a domino effect of delays and cancellations throughout the day: over 10,000 flights were delayed and more than 1,300 cancelled.

Initial investigations pointed to a corrupted database file introduced during maintenance. A Congressional investigation later confirmed the failure was caused by a contractor-introduced error that corrupted the NOTAM database.