The Federal Aviation Administration announced on Sunday that its primary system for sending real-time safety alerts to pilots, the NOTAM system, was back online after a temporary outage. Despite the outage, there were no major disruptions to U.S. air travel. The F.A.A. stated that the system was operational by 11 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday.
NOTAM alerts pilots of potential hazards in the air or on the ground, such as closed runways or airspace restrictions. The F.A.A. and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the temporary outage on Saturday and said they were using a contingency program to send safety alerts while investigating the cause of the outage.
This is not the first time the NOTAM system has experienced issues. In January 2023, a similar failure resulted in thousands of flight delays across American airspace due to human error. The F.A.A. is currently modernizing the system to prevent future outages.
The F.A.A. provides air traffic service to more than 45,000 flights a day across the more than 29 million square miles of the national airspace system in the United States. Despite the recent outage, air travel operations are back to normal with the NOTAM system fully operational again.
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