Biden orders Transportation Sec. Buttigieg is conducting a FULL investigation into the nationwide ban on flying

President Joe Biden is calling on Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to launch a full investigation into an outage that has caused flights across the United States to be grounded or delayed Wednesday morning.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has asked all airlines to temporarily ground domestic flights until 9 a.m. ET as officials desperately search for what has led to the disruption of a vital safety system.

Biden told reporters early Wednesday that he had already been in contact with Buttigieg and indicated he would be closely monitoring matters as they unfolded.

“I told them to get in touch with me directly if they find out,” the president said just before 8 p.m. ET.

“Planes can still land safely, just not take off yet. They don’t know what’s causing it, they expect that in a few hours they’ll have a good sense of what caused it and will react at that point.’

President Joe Biden told reporters early Wednesday that he had already been in touch with Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg

It comes just over a week after the Department of Transportation launched an investigation into Southwest Airlines over the widespread cancellation of flights over the Christmas holiday.

Buttigieg released his own statement an hour earlier, announcing that he was working with FAA officials to investigate.

“I contacted the FAA this morning about an outage affecting a key system used to provide safety information to pilots,” the Secretary of Transportation said.

“The FAA is working to resolve this issue quickly and safely to allow air traffic to resume normal operations and will continue to provide updates.”

All flights currently airborne are safe to land, according to the FAA.

The agency announced at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday that its Notice to Air Missions system was not working properly.

It “warns pilots of closed runways, equipment failures and other potential hazards along an airline route or at a location that could affect flight,” according to the FAA.

As of now, operations of the National Airspace System remain “limited” as the “Notice to Air Missions” system is still not fully restored.

There is currently no evidence that a cyberattack caused the outage, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

However, she said Biden has ordered the Department of Transportation to begin a “full investigation into the causes.”

The new air travel crisis comes on the heels of Southwest Airlines’ holiday season collapse, which resulted in the company’s approximately 16,000 flights being canceled between December 21 and 31.

Scenes of long airport lines and stranded passengers sleeping in chairs or canceling plans to see family altogether gave a somber undertone to the first holiday season since 2019, largely free of COVID-19 restrictions.

Buttigieg warned Southwest at the end of the crisis that his department would “use the full extent of its investigative and enforcement powers to hold Southwest accountable if it fails to deliver on promises to reimburse passengers.”