Flight Delays Continue Across US After System Outage Halts Takeoffs, Affects 20% Of Flight Activity — How Are Airline Stocks Reacting?

A system outage from the Federal Aviation Administration travel Wednesday as thousands of flights in the U.S. were delayed or canceled.

President Joe Biden said in a press conference that the root cause for the outage was still unknown.

The main problem occurred as the system providing pilots with pre-flight safety messages came down.

Regular air traffic was resumed early in the A.M., but the outage’s aftermath had effects across Wednesday's flight schedule.

According to data from Flight Aware, 1,177 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were canceled while another 7,694 experienced delays on Wednesday.

The FAA handles a daily average of 45,000 flights, so Wednesday's events amount to a disruption of almost 20% of all U.S. commercial flight activity.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stood behind the decision to halt all air traffic calling it “the right call” on a CNN Live interview, though he acknowledged that “these kinds of disruptions should not happen.”

The Biden administration official said there was no evidence of a cyberattack.

A former FAA official told The Hill that system capacity issues could have been behind the outage. The Hill's source called for an upgrade of the FAA system in order for this issue to not come up again in the future.

Hours after the flight ban was lifted, a map of airport delays by flight tracking site Flight Stats continues to show most major airports across the country with “excessive delay” status — a five out of five in its delay categories.

Departure lists from major airports including John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, Los Angeles International Airport and Miami International Airport show that most flights scheduled for Wednesday afternoon are posted as “delayed,” with the situation becoming uncertain for flights departing after 4 p.m. eastern time.

Impact On Airline Stocks: The stock market perceived the halt as a temporary problem and not a fault of U.S. airlines: major airline stocks didn’t experience major disruptions in their prices. At the time of writing:

• Delta Air Lines, Inc. DAL was up 0.79%. 
• United Airlines Holdings Inc. UAL was up by 4%
• Spirit Airlines Inc. SAVE was up by 2%.
• American Airlines Group Inc. AAL was up by 1.68%.
• Southwest Airlines Co. LUV was down by 0.39%.

The Dow Jones U.S. Airlines Index was up 1.56% while the S&P 500 Airlines index was up by 1.29%

Photo by VOO QQQ on Unsplash.