Tampa International Airport flight schedule still backed up after FAA computer outage grounds morning flights

TAMPA, Fla. - The monitors for the arrivals and delays at all U.S. airports – including Tampa International Airport – have been seeing red throughout the day Wednesday. While the FAA computer outage has been resolved, the impact is still being felt across U.S. airports.

Just after 9 a.m., an airplane landed on the tarmac of TPA, which was a welcoming sight for travelers standing by inside the terminal. Before that, the FAA grounded all flights as they worked to fix an outage with their NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system, which provides real-time flight hazards and restrictions to all commercial airline pilots.

According to Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, "there is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point." She says President Joe Biden directed the U.S. Department of Transportation to investigate the cause.

"I'm just going to roll with whatever happens," one woman traveling to North Carolina told FOX 13. "It's not going to help to get stressed out."

This all comes just a few weeks after Southwest experienced a service meltdown. More than 16,700 flights over the last 10 days of December were canceled. The issue began with a winter storm and grew worse when its crew-rescheduling technology broke down under the strain of reassigning thousands of pilots and flight attendants. 

"I thought, ‘Oh no, not again,’" said one traveler who was scheduled to fly with Southwest out of TPA. "But they are all delayed."

NOTAMs used to be available through a hotline, but that was phased out with the internet. The alerts span from mundane information about construction at airports to urgent flight restrictions or broken equipment.

MORE: FAA reports nationwide system failure, causing widespread US flight delays

Michael McCormick, an assistant professor in the College of Aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said the FAA has been allocated money by Congress. He said they've been upgrading the air traffic control system to the next generation aviation system. 

"They transitioned from ground-based system to satellite based systems to provide greater flexibility, greater reliability and increased efficiency in the system. So they've actually been upgrading over time," McCormick said. "This is an incident where they upgraded the NOTAM system, but something went wrong in the backup system yesterday evening that caused the problem that we saw today."

All aircraft are required to route through the system, including commercial and military flights.

Those who are planning to fly out of TPA can check their flight status here: www.tampaairport.com/flight-status.