Yesterday morning (January 11, 2023) the FAA halted air traffic across the country because of computer issues. Rumors started going around, almost immediately, that the FAA had been the victim of a cyber-attack and this was the result. But the Federal Aviation Administration has now explained the situation and it's a lot more relatable for anyone with a computer.
According to the FAA, the outage that halted air traffic was caused by a simple, damaged database file. On January 10th, problems with the system used to inform pilots of potential problems in the air and ground started to develop. This forced officials to reboot the system early the next morning, which led to the error and to the 2 hours worth of delayed flights.
Experts say that this highlights problems with the agency because the processes and systems used are decades old and there have been many problems in trying to make upgrades and updates.