Paris flights to North America delayed as US aviation safety system crashes

Paris' international airports are expecting flight delays due to a US Federal Aviation Administration system failure that has affected international flights into North America.

A spokesperson for Aeroports de Paris announced this Wednesday, "We have been informed of a technical incident. At this stage there have been no flight cancellations but some delays are to be expected.

ADP operates Paris Charles de Gaulle and Orly international airports in the French capital.

Meanwhile, Air France said the airline is currently operating its flight schedule to and from the United States as normal, but continues to monitor the  situation closely.

This comes as US flights were grounded or delayed on Wednesday as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) scrambled to fix a system outage, with passengers told to check with airlines for updates. 

US flights grounded

The FAA said it had ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 1400 UT to allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information.

Flights already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations.

• Air France cancels more than half of flights as controllers strike

The FAA said it was working to restore a system that alerts pilots to hazards and changes to airport facilities and procedures that had stopped processing updated information.

"The FAA is still working to fully restore the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system following an outage.

"While some functions are beginning to come back on line, National Airspace System operations remain limited," the FAA said on Twitter.

Hundreds of flights delayed

A total of 1,230 flights were delayed within, into or out of the United States as of 1219 UT, flight tracking website FlightAware showed, without citing reasons.

A NOTAM is a notice containing information essential to personnel concerned with flight operations, but not known far enough in advance to be publicised by other means.

As well as Air France, Germany's Lufthansa said they were continuing to operate flights to and from the United States.

A total of 21,464 flights are scheduled to depart from US airports this Wednesday with a carrying capacity of nearly 2.9 million passengers.