President Joe Biden signed H.R. 340 into law this past weekend requiring the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to establish a task force to provide recommendations for improvement of Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system, which has faced major issues since January.
The new law comes after the safety critical system crashed in early January, grounding domestic flights across the U.S. for nearly two hours.
The incident marked one of the largest examples of a significant federal IT system outage caused by a damaged database file.
It has also raised questions about the pace of the FAA’s ongoing Next Generation Air Transportation System modernization initiative (NextGen).
Federal Aviation Administration Acting Administrator Billy Nolen said in April that his agency has requested $19.6 million to modernize its NOTAM system and retire aging applications that played a role in its systems going down.
Nolen a Senate committee in February that the agency is about 50% through those upgraded efforts.
It is also expected to provide improved accuracy and accessibility for pilots, dispatchers and NOTAM consumers. This modernization effort is expected to be complete by mid-2025 although the FAA is looking into ways to accelerate that schedule. (Fed Scoop 06/05/23)
SIDEBAR:
Deputy DoT may be FAA's interim director
WASHINGTON - Deputy U.S. Transportation Secretary Polly Trottenberg is expected to be named Federal Aviation Administration's next interim leader, sources told Reuters on June 4. The source cautioned that appointment wasn’t final and could change. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news. Acting FAA administrator Billy Nolen is expected to leave the agency on June 9, officials told Reuters last week. (Reuters 06/04/23)
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