(RoyalPatriot.com )- Since a critical FAA pilot notification system malfunctioned earlier this month, disrupting nearly 11,000 flights, the FAA has been looking into the cause of the problem.
The reason for the system failure that caused hundreds of planes to be grounded on January 11 has been identified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Contract personnel “unintentionally deleted files when moving data across databases,” according to the agency’s preliminary analysis of the incident. The issue arose when staff attempted to correct synchronization between the live central and backup databases. This triggered the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system outage.
The government organization said, “We have not yet discovered any proof of a cyber-attack or malevolent intent.”
The FAA promised to take action to prevent any such failure immediately after the outage, stating that it had “traced the outage to a corrupted database file.”
Thousands of flights nationwide were canceled or delayed, leaving some aircraft stranded for hours. The disruption highlighted American air travel’s reliance on the outdated NOTAM system, which produces warnings that pilots and airline dispatchers must refer to before an aircraft takes off. The alerts provide information on the weather, runway closures or construction, and other factors affecting flight safety.
The still-antiquated system used to be telephone-based, requiring pilots to contact certain flight service stations to get the information, but it has now migrated online.
The FAA claimed on January 19 that it had rectified the system and was working to strengthen it.
Aviation experts said they could not remember a system-wide notification system failure of this size brought on by a technical glitch.
Flight delays and cancellations will increase, “potentially for days,” according to aviation expert Kyle Bailey. He said that the NOTAM system is “not up to pace” and that “the longer this goes on, there’s going to be a ripple effect across the whole system.”
According to Bailey, the system is “layered and archaic,” and it urgently needs to be overhauled.
The FAA said it has performed the required system changes and made efforts to strengthen the NOTAM system. The agency is moving swiftly to apply any other lessons discovered in our efforts to maintain the stability of the country’s air traffic control system.
There have been suggestions from congress that a portion of the $5 billion for air traffic control facilities included in last year’s infrastructure package might go toward equipment improvements that would strengthen the NOTAM system. According to Biden cabinet member Pete Buttigieg, the United States Secretary of Transportation, any NOTAM update may have to wait for a new spending bill that funds the FAA.
In his remarks to reporters, Buttigieg said, “I believe this offers us a very critical data point and a really crucial time to understand what we’re going to need moving ahead.”
