Airport Alert: House Passes NOTAM Improvement Act
January 25, 2023
Following the outage of FAA's Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system that grounded flights across the country earlier this month, the House on January 25 passed with broad, bipartisan support, H.R. 346, the NOTAM Improvement Act. The legislation now goes to the Senate where it awaits further action.
The NOTAM Improvement Act, which was introduced by Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN), would create a task force under the FAA to offer solutions aimed at boosting the system's stability and keeping it safe from cyber-attacks. The task force would consist of pilots, airline and airport industry executives, union officials, air traffic controllers and other aviation and computer system experts.
The recent NOTAM incidents and proposals to upgrade the system are likely to continue to garner significant attention on Capitol Hill, particularly as Congress gears up to begin debate on FAA Reauthorization. In addition to House passage of this legislation, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Sam Graves (R-MO), Ranking Member Rick Larsen (D-WA), and 120 other members of Congress recently wrote Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg demanding that the FAA explain how it will avoid future incidents.
Last week, the FAA's initial review found that the January 11th NOTAM outage was caused when government contractors unintentionally deleted files while working to improve the system's databases. The FAA said it didn't find any evidence of a cyber-attack or nefarious actors but would continue to investigate.
AAAE continues to work with airports and monitor potential impacts to the NOTAM system. Today, many airports reported that they were unable to access NOTAM Manager. The FAA informed AAAE that the Federal NOTAM System was experiencing intermittent delays that prevented or delayed users from gaining access to the system; however, as of late this afternoon, FAA reported that the system is now fully operational and airports should be experiencing minimal, if any, issues.
If an airport needs to issue a NOTAM immediately and still cannot access NOTAM Manager, the FAA is advising airports to contact the NOTAM hotline at 1-877-487-6867 (1-877-4-US-NTMS). The cause of the delays experienced today has not been identified yet. Please reach out to Justin Barkowski at justin.barkowski@aaae.org if you have any questions or are experiencing any problems with accessing NOTAM Manager.
Following the outage of FAA's Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system that grounded flights across the country earlier this month, the House on January 25 passed with broad, bipartisan support, H.R. 346, the NOTAM Improvement Act. The legislation now goes to the Senate where it awaits further action.
The NOTAM Improvement Act, which was introduced by Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN), would create a task force under the FAA to offer solutions aimed at boosting the system's stability and keeping it safe from cyber-attacks. The task force would consist of pilots, airline and airport industry executives, union officials, air traffic controllers and other aviation and computer system experts.
The recent NOTAM incidents and proposals to upgrade the system are likely to continue to garner significant attention on Capitol Hill, particularly as Congress gears up to begin debate on FAA Reauthorization. In addition to House passage of this legislation, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Sam Graves (R-MO), Ranking Member Rick Larsen (D-WA), and 120 other members of Congress recently wrote Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg demanding that the FAA explain how it will avoid future incidents.
Last week, the FAA's initial review found that the January 11th NOTAM outage was caused when government contractors unintentionally deleted files while working to improve the system's databases. The FAA said it didn't find any evidence of a cyber-attack or nefarious actors but would continue to investigate.
AAAE continues to work with airports and monitor potential impacts to the NOTAM system. Today, many airports reported that they were unable to access NOTAM Manager. The FAA informed AAAE that the Federal NOTAM System was experiencing intermittent delays that prevented or delayed users from gaining access to the system; however, as of late this afternoon, FAA reported that the system is now fully operational and airports should be experiencing minimal, if any, issues.
If an airport needs to issue a NOTAM immediately and still cannot access NOTAM Manager, the FAA is advising airports to contact the NOTAM hotline at 1-877-487-6867 (1-877-4-US-NTMS). The cause of the delays experienced today has not been identified yet. Please reach out to Justin Barkowski at justin.barkowski@aaae.org if you have any questions or are experiencing any problems with accessing NOTAM Manager.
