A local aviation expert says the FAA made the right decision Wednesday to ground all domestic flights after an outage in their Notice to Air Missions System also known as NOTAM.

NOTAM is critical to flight planning and safety, and allows pilots to prepare for weather, flight conditions and other hazards in the sky or at airports.

It can even notify pilots when birds are in their way, so they don't hit them.

Ken Smith, the general manager of Three Wing Aviation Group in Stratford, says with flying, keeping passengers and crew safe is the priority.

"They can ground stop the whole country as we seen like 9/11. Now, this ground stop wasn't okay everybody has to get out of the air, because the flights that were already in the air already had the NOTAM from before they left. So, they were still safe to fly in from, but they didn't want to once the system got overloaded they just, you know, thought a ground stop was was the best thing to do for the whole country and so they got a handle on the situation," said Smith.

Smith says people with upcoming trips should not worry about Wednesday's outage.

He says people should feel safer knowing the NOTAM system is in place.