For the first time since the 9/11 attacks, the FFA (Federal Aviation Administration) had to temporarily ground all of the flights within, to and from the United States. This outrage canceled over 1,300 flights while delaying over 10,000 during this outage. Thankfully many of the planes were able to depart to their destinations just hours after being grounded.

According to NBC News, the NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system had an outage. This system is vital to pilots as it has key information regarding flights and other means of operations. Such information includes weather, flight conditions and potential hazards, and is overall a very important way for pilots to stay updated.

The NOTAM system was created by government agencies and has since been in use since 1947, with it changing and advancing over the years, as it originally was used for ships.

This flight grounding comes just weeks after Southwest Airlines had to cancel many of its flights. This became a huge problem, especially as the holidays were coming to a close. Many people had to search for their luggage within a sea of baggage “free for all.”