US lawmakers have passed a bill they said aims to improve the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) pilot safety notification system (NOTAM) in the wake of the computer error that saw a nationwide flight grounding on January 11.
“Today the House passed several bills to strengthen the reliability and effectiveness of the FAA’s NOTAM system and make federal disaster programs work better for disaster victims,” said Republican congressman Sam Graves, chair of the House of Representatives transportation and infrastructure committee.
The NOTAM measures, introduced by Republican Pete Stauber and c0-sponsored by Democrat Mark de Saulnier, were followed by the passage of two other bills "to improve and increase transparency in federal programs for disaster assistance", according to Graves.
“The recent NOTAM system meltdown highlighted a huge vulnerability in our air transportation system and underscores the need to address the leadership vacuum at FAA. As a professional pilot, I use the NOTAM system on a regular basis, and I know firsthand the importance of ensuring that it’s reliable and functional," Graves said.
The FAA said the outage was caused by the accidental deletion of computer files needed to operate NOTAM.
According to a January 25 report by Reuters, the FAA has since revoked access to the system to the contractor company said to be responsible for the error and the outage, which prompted widespread speculation that the system had been hit with a cyber-attack.