KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Lee's Summit family are one of many travelers across the U.S. impacted by a computer system outage from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FAA said the outage impacted the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system.
“It’s what could be considered mundane information, but it really isn’t. It’s data on the infrastructure in which you’re flying and the ground infrastructure that you’re using," explained Dick Eiserer.
Eiserer is a retired airline pilot who said the technology is important for safety.
“You’re going from point A to point B and your destination point B, there is a perhaps airport maintenance vehicle, there’s a flat tire on the runway that closes the runway. We’d like to know that,” Eiserer explained.
The outage Wednesday morning resulted in a ground stoppage of flights and numerous delays that rippled into the afternoon.
Jonel Bell and her family were trying to catch a flight to Miami for a Disney cruise.
“If we don’t get there by 12:30, between 12:30 and 3 o’clock tomorrow, we can’t go.”
Bell and her husband Brenton have considered alternative plans to make cruise.
“We talked about driving," Bell said "It’s a 21 hour drive we would have to leave right now."
The Lee's Summit mom expressed cautious optimism however they could make their trip.
“The lady I talked to is pretty confident even if we left at 1am that the flight was going to leave that it wouldn’t get cancelled," Bell said, "I’m hoping she’s right.”
