The US Federal Civil Aviation Department (FAA) said that the outdated NOTA computer system, due to which about 10 thousand flights were stopped in January, should be completely updated until 2030, which caused indignation of the heads of the US government.
January 11, FAA suspended all domestic flights for the first time after 2001, when NOTAM servers were refused, which provides pilots and flight crews with important information about flight safety or routing planning. The problem arose due to the fact that the airport employees accidentally deleted an important file, but the correction of the situation obviously takes a lot of time.
February 7, at the hearing in the Committee of the Congress on Transport and Infrastructure, several representatives of the Committee said that the system of notifications about air missions (NOTAM) was very outdated and that 2030 is “unacceptable for a long time” to wait for improvements. Politicians indicated that the optimal period for updating systems is 2025. The FAA agency said that the system updates until 2030 Founded on current financing, and that the agency is looking for ways to accelerate work. It is worth noting that $ 29.4 million was allocated for NOTAM modernization.
The January failure, although short -term, led to a stop of more than 10,000 flights – all of them had to take off in the airspace of the United States for several hours. FAA introduced precautions to prevent a repetition of such an incident, including by introducing an hourly delay in the database synchronization and the requirements of the presence of two employees during any maintenance of NOTAM.
US Minister of Transport Pit Buttijich, whose department oversees the FAA said that FAA FAU began modernizing the NOTA system in 2019 and plans to stop the use of the outdated NOTAM system of the United States by mid -2025. The second stage of modernization of the NOTA system is planned to be completed in 2030.
Pete Bans, the president and chief executive director of the Aviation Manufacturers of Aviation Aviation, recommended the FAA to add artificial intelligence to NOTAM to cut off unnecessary information and “give pilots only important and necessary data for the missions that they perform”.