The FAA Given One Week Deadline for a Backup Plan to the NOTAM System

The Federal Aviation Administration’s Acting Administrator, Billy Nolen, was given one week to create a plan for “a reliable, separate backup system to ensure true redundancy” for the administration’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system, which failed last month and caused the first nation-wide ground stop since September 11, 2001.

The order was given yesterday, February 15, by U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

“I don’t think we have true redundancy here,” Sen. Cantwell said to Acting Administrator Nolen. “So I want to see a plan from the FAA that examines the fact that the backup systems are still subject to the same kind of, if you want to call it human error, of deletion of files. You’re building a system to try to firewall that from not happening again. But it could be a different problem, and we still have a backup system that would be affected. So until we get the true modernization system, I would like you to go back and see what level of redundancy, that you really have a truly separate system that would not be impacted by this.”

The NOTAM system’s failure on January 11, 2023 caused a nationwide ground stop that led to 1,300 flights canceled and 9,500 flights to be delayed.

The FAA is currently inspecting all aspects of its systems in a collaboration with MITRE, which specializes in solving national problems across aviation, cybersecurity, health and other critical areas.