GlobalAir.com has been around to see many things in both aviation and digital technology. Dating back to 1995, the site has been around longer than Google and longer than Facebook. The first time you logged onto AOL and heard “You’ve got mail?” GlobalAir.com is probably older.
All jokes about our age aside, this is no joke: The computers that run the FAA’s NOTAM system are older than GlobalAir.com.
While the glitch on Wednesday that led to the first nationwide ground stop at U.S airports since 9/11 turned out to be human error rather than mere mechanical function, it still shows the need to upgrade the NOTAM system beyond just the updated name it was given in 2021.
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An unnamed senior government official reportedly told NBC News this week that the computer system running NOTAMs has been around for three decades. That official said an upgrade is not planned until the end of this decade – at least seven years away.
This issue of aging tech is not new and is not a burden solely of the FAA. In terms of U.S. government computer systems, being in your thirties is relatively young. A 2019 GAO report noted that critical systems used by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Treasury Department were 50 and 51 years old, respectively.
If it’s still around, the computer system in the Social Security Administration mentioned in that GAO report will turn 49 this year. Give it another decade and a half, and it will be old enough to draw its own social security check.
Replacing aging tech is not just the FAA’s problem. Perhaps we should look on the bright side – this sort of failure has happened only once, was apparently the result of some sort of contractor mishap rather than a cyber attack, and it was remedied without tragedy (aside from those frequent commercial flyers out there now dealing with the shellshock from the Southwest meltdown and now this.)
The NBAA says it has been urging the FAA for nearly five years to make its NOTAM system more resilient and to build in redundancies.
The association noted in a statement Wednesday that it co-chairs the Aeronautical Information System (AIS) Reform Coalition, an industry group that includes airlines, airports and other stakeholders, which continues to advocate for additional system redundancies and other upgrades.
Heidi Williams is NBAA senior director of air traffic services and a co-chair of the AIS Coalition. She noted in the NBAA statement that the U.S. has the world’s best, largest and safest air traffic control system.
“But the NOTAM outage makes clear that when problems are identified, they must be met with proven solutions so that America retains its world-leading aviation system well into the future,” the statement claims.
Other agencies, including the AOPA and ALPA serve on an FAA NOTAM modernization board, including reducing the number of old notices and digitalizing everything. Read more about their efforts here.
This is now the 20th year for GlobalAir.com to offer up-to-date FAA information, including NOTAMs, along with weather info and FBO fuel prices in our robust and pioneering Aircraft Resource Center. This is the first time we have seen something like this in all those years, and we hope it is the last. A renewed effort toward renovation certainly would not hurt the FAA.
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