Described as a critical Federal Aviation Administration system for pilots, NOTAM, short for Notice to Air Missions was created in 1947, but a systemic issue on Wednesday caused a nationwide stoppage of flights that caused ripple effects throughout the system.
The computer system notifies pilots about changes in airspace and at airports. Flights cannot take off without the system being operational, which led to the ground stop on Wednesday.
“A vital safety system because this is the one that moves messages that pilots need on anything from a taxiway or runway being out to an issue with a navigation beacon to maybe an upcoming military or space operation, “ said Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Today’s FAA ground stop cancelled more than 1,300 flights nationwide and delayed more than 9,000 flights.
Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. Sign up for the weekly Chicago Catch-Up newsletter here.
Buttigieg promised an investigation into the incident.
“Our primary focus is to determine that root cause. I’ve directed the FAA to figure out exactly how this happened,” he said.
The FAA issued a statement later in the day saying that they are continuing to review the “root cause” of the NOTAM system outage but “preliminary work has traced the outage to a damaged database file.” The statement also said there was “no evidence of a cyberattack.”
Local
This is just the latest disruption at US airports this month. Several Florida airports experienced hours long flight delays January 2nd after a radar issue caused air traffic control problems. And over the holidays, Southwest Airlines cancelled over 16,000 flights due to outdated computer systems.
In a strange twist, Canada’s Air Traffic Control System which sends messages to pilots, also shut down air traffic today.
NBC 5 Investigates learned that the NOTAM system has been undergoing upgrade changes. Including an update just last month clarifying the authority of submitting a NOTAM message.
“A critical system like this has a lot of redundancy built into it with backups, “Buttigieg said. “So, we need to understand why with all that redundancy, it still rose to the level that there had to be a ground stop.”
Travel Expert with Going, Katy Nastro said, “It will likely take airlines well into the rest of today and into tomorrow to actually right the system.”
Nastro said passengers facing significant delays have rights—even though it’s out of the airlines’ control.
”Like this scenario with the FAA and air traffic control, you are entitled to get rebooked on a new flight if you should choose or a cash refund, “ added Nastro.
In 2021-the U.S. House of passed a bill to establish an FAA task force to improve the NOTAM pilot alert system but it stalled in the Senate.
