Airport CEO: Normal air traffic expected Thursday after computer glitch In US affects flights out of GAIA

Airport authorities said Wednesday night they expect scheduled air travel in and out of Grantley Adams International Airport (GAIA) to return to normal by Thursday morning after all flights coming in from the United States were grounded because of a computer system outage.

The airport’s chief executive officer Hadley Bourne said while the situation on Wednesday morning caused some disruption to incoming and outgoing flights during the early part of the day, by late afternoon the two carriers bringing travellers from the US – American Airlines and JetBlue – were resuming operations.

He said about 600 passengers were impacted by the delays in Barbados.

“The afternoon flights that had been delayed have arrived and the flights that were here are departing and we should be back on schedule by tomorrow,” Bourne said in an interview with Barbados TODAY.

“Jet Blue this afternoon could be delayed by an hour. American [Airlines] may be a bit longer. We don’t have a specific time for its departure out of the US, but we could add four hours to whenever it departs.”

Bourne pointed out that the computer problem had been fixed overnight and it was only a matter of the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) in the US prioritising flight operations.

Minister of Tourism and International Transport Ian Gooding-Edghill welcomed the speedy resolution to the computer glitch, particularly as it was the height of the winter tourist season and the US is the island’s main market.

“I have been advised by the airport that the matter is under control. I was advised that the glitch that happened was resolved after nine this morning and service should resume…. Obviously, the airport would advise the ministry whether or not there would be any delays with respect to that,” Minister Gooding-Edghill told Barbados TODAY.

“We are happy that the matter was resolved because you know we are in the midst of the winter season and, therefore, the movement of passengers is critical to us maintaining the tourism business in Barbados.”

The FAA had ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures after its pilot alerting system crashed and the agency had to perform a hard reset around 2 a.m., officials said.

Reuters news agency said the cause of the problem with the pilot-alerting system which delayed thousands of flights in the US was unclear, but government officials said they had so far found no evidence of a cyberattack.

The outage occurred at a historically slow time for US travel after the December holiday travel season, but airlines have said demand remains strong as travel continues to recover to near pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels.

“Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the US following an overnight outage to the Notice to Air Missions system that provides safety info to flight crews. The ground stop has been lifted. We continue to look into the cause of the initial problem,” the FAA tweeted.

More than 5 400 flights had been delayed and 900 cancelled, according to the FlightAware website, as officials said it would take hours to recover.

US President Joe Biden ordered the Transportation Department to investigate the outage and said the cause of the failure was unknown at this time.

Asked if a cyber attack was behind the outage, Biden told reporters at the White House: “We don’t know.”

emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb