An FAA computer glitch grounded flights across the US

guest · Jan 11, 2023

By Jon Porter @JonPorty - January 11, 2023

A critical Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) system suffered an overnight glitch, grounding flights across the US. The FAA posted an advisory notice early Wednesday that notes that the United States NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system “failed” but said just before 9AM ET that “normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually.”
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NOTAM is a critical system that keeps pilots and other flight personnel informed of the status of airports across the country, Reuters reports. It can offer information on runway closures, bird hazards, and other obstacles.

At 7:19AM ET, the agency said it had “ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures” until 9AM ET to give it time to “validate the integrity of flight and safety information.”
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A tweet at 8:50AM ET confirmed the restoration and said that the ground stop has been lifted.

“The FAA is working to restore its Notice to Air Missions System,” the FAA said in an earlier statement. “We are performing final validation checks and repopulating the system now. Operations across the National Airspace System are affected.” Another statement by the White House press secretary said, “There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point,” but the FAA is still looking into the cause of the issue.
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guest · Jan 13, 2023

FAA outage that grounded flights blamed on old tech and damaged database file
By Jon Brodkin @jbrodkin - January 12, 2023

A Notice to Air Missions system outage that grounded flights across the US yesterday morning seems to have been caused by a damaged database file, the Federal Aviation Administration said last night.

"The FAA is continuing a thorough review to determine the root cause of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system outage," the FAA statement said. "Our preliminary work has traced the outage to a damaged database file. At this time, there is no evidence of a cyber attack. The FAA is working diligently to further pinpoint the causes of this issue and take all needed steps to prevent this kind of disruption from happening again."
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Citing an anonymous source, CNN reported that "air traffic control officials realized they had a computer issue late Tuesday" and decided "to reboot the system when it would least disrupt air travel, early on Wednesday morning. But ultimately that plan and the outage led to massive flight delays and an unprecedented order to stop all aircraft departures nationwide."

CNN also wrote that one corrupt file was found in the main NOTAM system, and another corrupt file was found in the backup system.
FAA struggles with technology
The source blamed old tech infrastructure. "Because of budgetary concerns and flexibility of budget, this tech refresh has been pushed off," CNN quoted the source as saying. "I assume now they're going to actually find money to do it."
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NOTAM complexity “mind-boggling”
The NOTAM system has given headaches to pilots and other users "who say it overloads them with information that’s irrelevant to their flight and makes it difficult to identify actually useful information," an NBC News report said yesterday.
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Senate Transportation Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said yesterday that the committee will look into the NOTAM outage. "As the Committee prepares for FAA reauthorization legislation, we will be looking into what caused this outage and how redundancy plays a role in preventing future outages. The public needs a resilient air transportation system," Cantwell wrote.
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guest · Jan 20, 2023

The FAA grounded all US flights because contractors mistakenly deleted files
They were in the midst of synchronizing databases, the agency revealed.
By Mariella Moon @mariella_moon - January 20, 2023

The contractors working on the Federal Aviation Administration's NOTAM system apparently deleted files by accident, leading to the delays and cancellations of thousands of US flights. If you'll recall, the FAA paused all domestic departures in the US on the morning of January 11th, because its NOTAM or Notice to Air Missions system had failed. NOTAMs typically contain important information for pilots, including warnings for potential hazards along a flight's route, flight restrictions and runway closures.
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While the FAA only paused departures on the 11th, US flights were already being pushed back the day before after the outage occurred at around 3:28PM ET. The issue even had an impact on military flights that partly relied on FAA NOTAMs: Pilots reportedly had to call around to ask for potential flight hazards themselves.

The agency later reported that the system failed after "personnel who failed to follow procedures" damaged certain files. Now, it has shared more details as part of the preliminary findings of an ongoing investigation.
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As The Washington Post notes, it's unclear at this point how deleting some files would cause the whole system to go down. The FAA had already fixed the problem and had taken steps to make the system more resilient, but the incident certainly puts the reliability of FAA's outdated technologies into question.
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guest · Jan 27, 2023

FAA revokes access to systems for personnel involved in deletion of NOTAM system files
By John Hewitt Jones, Nihal Krishan @NihalKrishan| FedScoop - January 26, 2023

The Federal Aviation Authority has revoked access to its buildings and systems for contracting personnel who were directly involved in the deletion of key computer files that took down the agency’s Notice to Air Missions system.
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In a statement to FedScoop, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokesperson said it had suspended access for certain staff working for Maryland-headquartered firm Spatial Front, while it completes an investigation into the incident.
Spatial Front is a technology contractor that provides first-level services to the FAA for the legacy Notice to Air Mission (NOTAM) system.

Details of which federal contracting personnel were directly involved in the incident were first reported late Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal. According to an FAA spokesperson, the agency has provided the details to Congress.
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The incident marks one of the largest examples of a major federal IT system outage caused by a damaged database file, and has raised questions about the pace of the Federal Aviation Administration’s ongoing Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) modernization initiative.

According to the FAA’s website, the goal of the program is to increase the safety, efficiency and resilience of the National Airspace System, and it is expected to be completed in 2030.
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