Experts say old tech could be responsible for FAA outage that caused thousands of delays
Almost 10,000 flights in the U.S. were delayed or canceled as a technical issue forced the Federal Aviation Administration to pause departures nationwide for about 90 minutes Wednesday morning.
According to the agency, an outage affecting the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system, which alerts pilots to safety issues at and around the nation’s airports, was behind the disruption.
The FAA has not yet identified a specific cause of the issue, but experts told USA TODAY that the U.S. air traffic control system often relies on outdated technology to keep things moving, and it’s likely that a computer glitch of some kind was responsible.
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With the FAA up for reauthorization in Congress later this year, those same experts said they hope the government uses this opportunity to fund needed upgrades to the agency’s IT systems.
The FAA outage causing flight delays across the US, explained.
“It’s a safety issue,” Ahmed Abdelghany, associate dean for research at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s David B. O’Maley College of Business told USA TODAY. “God forbid if the pilots are not updated with abnormal conditions, it might lead to some serious problems like accidents or something like that.”
The NOTAM system used to be telephone-based, with pilots calling flight service stations for the information, but that process moved online.
What caused the NOTAM failure on Wednesday?
The FAA said it’s investigating the problem but hasn’t issued an official cause yet. However, experts told USA TODAY that IT issues are a likely culprit.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said he directed “an after-action process to determine root causes” and make recommendations for how to address them.
“Similar to what Southwest saw last month with difficulties in using an antiquated system to handle a major weather disruption to the system, it’s highly likely that the FAA saw this problem exacerbated because they were running on older technologies,” said Laurie Garrow, a professor of civil engineering that specializes in aviation at Georgia Tech.
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“Our systems still crash,” he said. “You shut your system down, and you reboot it … The system comes back, and you continue to work it.”
But, he added, the FAA will investigate the root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Another expert said Wednesday’s issue highlights a need to make the NOTAM system more redundant.
“It wouldn’t matter whether somebody kicked the cord or whether they failed the server for some reason. If it’s a single point of failure, there’s a probability of it (happening) again,” said Robert W. Mann, an aviation consultant in Port Washington, New York. “I would say the same thing about Southwest’s crew reassignment system, but it’s easier said than it is done … In both cases, it’s going to require FAA validation of the replacement system while you chug along using the steam gauge version of that system.”
How can the FAA prevent a similar failure in the future?
The experts who spoke to USA TODAY all agreed that the FAA’s backend technology needs an upgrade.
“I hope it’s a call for more funding from Congress that’s desperately needed to modernize the air traffic control system,” Garrow said.
Arjun Garg, a partner at the Hogan Lovells law firm and former FAA chief counsel said that the agency’s technology is typically complicated and often outdated as a result of the funding and implementation cycles in government
“The lack of stable consistent funding when you’re on the budget appropriations cycle of the federal government, it significantly hampers the ability to conduct that kind of upgrade,” he said. “The FAA has an added hamper” because its system has to run all day every day reliably, and you need to be able to conduct those upgrades while it’s still running.
With the upcoming FAA reauthorization, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a press briefing Wednesday the administration welcomes “the attention from Congress” on how to help the agency fix the issues with NOTAM.
Chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Maria Cantwell said Wednesday that the committee “will be looking into what caused this outage and how redundancy plays a role in preventing future outages.”
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What travelers need to know
While the delays and cancellations that resulted from the NOTAM outage are obviously frustrating for flyers, experts say the FAA prioritizes safety above all and that putting a pause to flights while the issue was addressed was the right move.
“I suspect they’ve got a pretty good idea of what happened,” Dombroff said. “If they didn’t know what happened, I’ve got a feeling the system would not be in the process of returning to normal … To have a situation like this and not know what caused it, and putting the system back online, I don’t think the FAA would have approached it like this.”
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He emphasized that travelers should feel safe getting on planes today, even if those planes are delayed.
“The FAA is first in line to want to figure out what happened and ensure it doesn’t happen again,” he said. “We should revel in the quality and safety of the system we have and understand it isn’t always going to work the way we want it to.”
Many airlines have also issued waivers to allow passengers whose flights were affected to adjust their travel plans without paying fare differences or change fees.
Contributing: Wyatte Grantham-Philips, USA TODAY; The Associated Press