No one knows what happened to NOTAM that caused perhaps the worst US mid-air crisis

Washington: The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said contract personnel “unintentionally deleted files” disrupting a key computer system that led to delay in more than 11,000 flights and cancellation of several others across the nation on January 11.

The FAA said that in a preliminary review it was found that the issue occurred while contract personnel were attempting to correct discrepancies between a live database and its backup.

“A preliminary FAA review of last week’s outage of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system determined that contract personnel unintentionally deleted files while working to correct synchronisation between the live primary database and a backup database,” the FAA said.

The NOTAM system gives pilots, flight crew and other users of the US airspace with critical safety information including update on runway closures.

No evidence of cyberattack

The FAA reiterated that it has not found any evidence of a cyberattack or “malicious intent”. It further said that investigation to find out what had actually occurred is still underway.

The agency has on Thursday updated lawmakers from both the parties on its investigation who were demanding response about technology vulnerabilities in the US aviation system.

FAA to brief staff and lawmakers

FAA acting Administrator Billy Nolen is expected to hold a virtual meeting on Friday with lawmakers and staff, who have sought details of what went wrong with a pilot messaging database which resulted to the first nationwide grounding of departing aircrafts since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Flights across US grounded on Jan. 11
On January 11, a computer outage at the FAA brought all flights in the US to a standstill, with hundreds of delays quickly cascading through the system at airports across the nation.

After the incident, United Airlines in a statement had said: “The FFA system that sends out important real-time flight hazards and restrictions to all commercial airline pilots – Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) – is currently suffering a nationwide outage.”

Though the shutdown lasted for about two hours, it caused thousands of airlines delays and cancellations.

A group of more than 120 US lawmakers, last week, told the FAA that the computer outage was “completely unacceptable” and demanded ab explanation from the agency on how it will avoid future incidents.

With inputs from agencies

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