The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) canceled all domestic flights in the United States on Wednesday, January 11, due to problems in the NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) security system. The investigation found that two employees who entered incorrect data into the system were responsible for the massive failure.
NOTAM is a system for notifying pilots of safety-critical conditions at airports and other areas that aircraft may cross, including everything from bird movement warnings to runway construction.
It was the first such failure for the country’s aircraft security system and caused hundreds of delays. Some cited a “hacking of critical infrastructure” as the cause, but preliminary FAA investigation findings pointed to “file corruption” in the NOTAM database.
Update 6: You should continue to assess what determines the total revenue for the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system outage. Our previous working day has traced outage to choose file file. At this time, there is no evidence of a cyber attack. (1/2)
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023
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Technicians immediately tried to switch to a backup system, but that also failed because it was trying to access the same damaged data. It took a total outage to restore the system, which resulted in the FAA grounding all flights for about 90 minutes. According to FlightAware, As of January 11, more than 10,000 flights were delayed and more than 1,300 canceledwhich was the first national flight ban in about two decades
“The system is functioning properly, and the number of cancellations today was less than 1%,” the agency later said.
The FAA later said the failure was due to employee actions. Two people working for the NOTAM contractor simply entered the wrong information into the system’s database. The US Aviation Administration is currently trying to determine whether these changes were made by accident, and will work to create new safeguards to prevent similar failures.
CNN notes that the NOTAM software has been in operation for over 30 years and is 6 years away from a full update. Transportation Secretary Pete Butidzic held several meetings with senior FAA officials after Wednesday’s failure and “made it clear” he wanted the system updated much faster than the administration’s planned timeline.
In its budget estimate for 2023 The FAA has requested $29.4 million for the Aeronautical Information Management Program (which includes NOTAM). Commenting on the operation of the system, the administration said that it was necessary to “remove the faulty legacy equipment that currently supports this function [NOTAM] in the national airspace system”.
Previously, the US Federal Aviation Administration proposed updating altimeters (altimeters) and installing special filters in passenger and cargo planes to protect air transport from the effects of 5G. The aviation authority cited about 100 reported “altimeter anomalies” (not excluding 5G signals) that led to false cockpit warnings and incorrect navigation equipment data.
According to FAA estimates, of the 7,993 aircraft registered in the United States, 820 require filters on existing navigation equipment and another 180 require new radio altimeters. About $26 million will be needed for this, and who will pay remains to be determined.
The US regulator proposes to upgrade navigation equipment in planes for $26 million so that they can “use” 5G
Source: Bloomberg, Reuters
