A brief ground stop order for all Air Canada and Rouge flights in the US due to an unspecified computer issue has been lifted.
A little after 11 am ET on Thursday, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered what’s known as a “ground stop” to all of the airline’s destinations in the US due to unspecified “internal computer issues.”
According to the FAA, the order came at the request of the airline.
Peter Fitzpatrick, a spokesperson for the airline, confirmed that the FAA directive was lifted after about an hour, and that all systems are returning to normal.
“Air Canada experienced a temporary technical issue with its communicator system, one of the systems that it uses to communicate with aircraft and monitor operational performance,” Fitzpatrick said. “There have been some delays as a result, but the system is now returning to normal and the precautionary ground stop has been lifted.”
A Canadian federal government source familiar with the matter told CBC news in a statement that “there is no reason to believe this is a cybersecurity incident.”
According to flight monitoring website FlightAware.com, Air Canada canceled 15 flights on Thursday, and 106 have experienced some sort of delay. That’s about 21 per cent of the airline’s normal route schedule.