FAA today Facing Congress Over System Failure

By Dana Malcolm 

Staff Writer 

#USA, February 7, 2023 – Even as it promises to upgrade its systems and laws are passed to safeguard air passengers, the US Federal Aviation Administration will have to answer to Congress regarding the January 11 meltdown that caused flights to be grounded for nearly three hours resulting in widespread flight delays that affected dozens of countries including the Turks and Caicos.

The unprecedented delay was the result of an outage to the Notice to Air Missions System (NOTAM). It grounded all outbound flights in the massive country as the Agency struggled to validate the integrity of flight and safety information. The only other time in recent memory that a shutdown of this magnitude affected the United States was immediately after the 9/11 bombings.

Officials from the FAA, Transportations Safety Board and others will appear before The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in a hearing called ‘Enhancing America’s Gold Standard in Aviation Safety,’ which will be livestreamed allowing the public to hear what exactly caused the outage and how the FAA is so sure it won’t happen again.

Days before the hearing was announced the US House of Representatives passed new legislation which will help make the NOTAM more effective as well as streamline disaster response and funding.’

Head of the committee Sam Greaves admitted that the incident proved that the incomplete governing structure at the institution needed to be addressed with urgency.

“The recent NOTAM system meltdown highlighted a huge vulnerability in our air transportation system and underscores the need to address the leadership vacuum at FAA,” Greaves said.

The hearing is today, February 7 and live at 10 am.