The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) explained a significant failure in its pilot warning system that delayed 10,000 flights by stating that the whole problem boiled all the way down to a contractor by chance deleting files.
In a press release, the agency said that “a review of last week’s outage of the flight mission notification system (NOTAM) showed that contract staff inadvertently deleted files while working to enhance synchronization between the lively primary database and the backup database.” The NOTAM system provides pilots with safety warnings, and its failure has caused chaos in the aviation industry.
The FAA didn’t provide additional details, but reiterated that there was no evidence the cyberattack caused the problem – even though it remains to be investigating. The FAA also said it had informed lawmakers of either side of Thursday’s investigation.
Airline executives had their very own opinions on the root causes of NOTAM’s failure, complaining that the failure of the system was due partly to the poorly funded and understaffed FAA.
CNBC quoted Delta CEO Ed Bastian as saying in an appearance on Squawk Box that he blames what happened “on the fact that we do not give [the FAA] resources, funds, personnel, tools, technology they need.”
During a United Airlines earnings call on Wednesday, UA CEO Scott Kirby said he hoped “this will likely be a call to our political leaders in Washington that we want to do higher.” In accordance with Kirby, the failure and the ensuing chaos “needs to be a wake-up call to all of us in aviation, something a lot of us in aviation have been talking about for a very long time … the FAA needs more resources.”
The FAA’s statement that the outage was caused by a contractor’s inadvertent deletion of files suggests that there have been some issues with the agency’s internal processes and oversight. Nonetheless, the agency’s response may highlight the need for more resources to assist maintain and improve systems.