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WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 (AP) — U.S. air travel largely returned to normal Thursday, a day after a computer system that sent safety messages to pilots failed and grounded traffic from coast to coast .
As of late morning, on the East Coast, only about 100 flights had been canceled and 1,000 delayed — much lower than Wednesday, when more than 1,300 flights were canceled and 11,000 delayed.
The FAA said the corrupted database file appeared to have caused an outage in the safety alert system. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg promised a thorough inspection to avoid another major breakdown.
“Now we have to understand how this happened in the first place, why the redundancy that would normally prevent it from being damaging didn’t stop it from being damaging this time, and what the original source of the wrong or corrupted file would have been,” said Buttigieg Ge told CNN.
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He said there was no indication that the outage was caused by a cyberattack, “but we wouldn’t rule that out until we have a clearer and better understanding of what’s going on.”
The massive disruption is the latest black eye for the FAA, which has traded responsibility with airlines for whoever inconveniences passengers more. Critics, including airline and travel industry leaders, say the agency is underfunded and needs to modernize its technology.
The FAA outage that began Tuesday night “is a clear indication that America’s transportation network is in dire need of a major upgrade,” said Jeff Freeman, president of the U.S. Travel Association trade group.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has been critical of the FAA on a variety of issues, including air traffic controller staffing. Last fall, he said the agency had made a “heroic effort” and was doing well most of the time, but could be overwhelmed during peak tourist periods.
Rep. Rick Larson of Washington, the top Democrat on the House aviation subcommittee, said the outage raised “questions about the current state of the FAA’s technical infrastructure.” He told CNN that Congress will consider whether the agency needs more money to modernize.
The outage came at an inopportune time for the FAA and Buttigieg.
The FAA is trying to repair its reputation after being widely criticized for the way it approved the Boeing 737 Max, without fully understanding that a flight control system malfunctioned and played a key role in two crashes that killed 346 people. The agency has taken a more hands-on approach as it considers and eventually refines the changes Boeing is making to get the plane back in the air.
The collapse of the Transportation Department’s regulator could also weaken Buttigieg’s moral authority to punish airlines when flights are canceled or delayed. He has been following airlines since last summer, most recently because of disruptions at Southwest Airlines, which canceled nearly 17,000 flights in the last 10 days of December.
U.S. air travel is largely dependent on computer systems that generate alerts known as NOTAMs, or notices to air tasks, data Wednesday showed.
Before a plane takes off, pilots and airline dispatchers must review notifications that include details about severe weather, runway closures or other temporary factors that could affect flights. The system used to be phone-based, but moved online a few years ago.
It went down late Tuesday and wasn’t fixed until Wednesday morning. The FAA took the rare step of temporarily preventing any planes from taking off. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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