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NOTAM system added to a tough week for U.S. aviation

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U.S. transportation chief says NOTAM needs an upgrade

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) - A key system that provides

safety messages to pilots resumed operating on Sunday morning

after an outage that began the previous night, the Federal

Aviation Administration said, in the latest difficulty for the

U.S. aviation system in the past week.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Sunday the

FAA's "Notice to Air Mission," or NOTAM, system is old and needs

an upgrade. The system went down late on Saturday, prompting the

agency to set up a hotline to send notices every 30 minutes with

updates to airlines.

"We are investigating the root cause of the outage," the FAA

said in a statement on Sunday.

The NOTAM system provides pilots, flight crews and other

users of U.S. airspace with critical safety notices. It could

include items such as taxiway lights being out at an airport,

nearby parachute activity or a specific runway being closed for

construction.

"There was minimal disruption," Duffy told CNN's "State of

the Union" program. "There's a process in place right now to get

this system fixed. We want to expedite that and get this new

system in place. This is an old system that needs to be

upgraded."

Duffy had said late on Saturday that the issue could have led to

some flight delays on Sunday. FlightAware, a company that tracks

flights, said there were 1,133 delays of U.S. flights on Sunday.

It is not clear how many were related to the NOTAM outage.

A NOTAM outage in January 2023 led to the first nationwide U.S.

ground stop since 2001, disrupting more than 11,000 flights. The

FAA said in 2023 it planned to discontinue an older NOTAM system

by mid-2025.

According to agency officials, an FAA contractor

unintentionally deleted files in the NOTAM system, causing the

2023 outage.

The U.S. aviation system has faced a difficult week.

On Wednesday, an American Airlines ( AAL ) passenger jet and a

military helicopter collided near Ronald Reagan Washington

National Airport, killing 67 people, the first fatal U.S.

passenger airline crash since 2009 and the deadliest U.S. air

disaster since 2001.

On Friday, a medical evacuation plane crashed soon after takeoff

in Philadelphia with a child and five others on board. All died

as did a person on the ground.