The News Not Noise Letter: What the F-AA!
All US airplanes grounded for the first time since 9/11. Plus, Biden aides find more classified documents and fashion and dish at the Golden Globes
Here are 5 news stories that are worth your time, plus a little news that doesn’t suck. In light of the insane meltdown at the FAA today, we’re going long on that.
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Here is today’s top story:
What the F-AA: Ever worry that a tech meltdown could ground our economy – or at least our airlines? Today, we got a glimpse of what that might look like. For about 90 minutes the FAA grounded all US flights. It’s the first time that’s happened since 9/11. 1200 flights were canceled and 8700 (and counting) were delayed. Planes are back in the air but as you can imagine, it’s cascaded into airport messes across the nation.
What happened? One of the FAA’s key computer systems failed and so did the backups. Yes, that’s weird. The system in question is called the Notice to Air Missions or NOTAMs which provides safety updates to flight crews; it notifies pilots about things like construction on a runway or lights out on a control tower. Think of it as Waze for airplanes. (Check out this tweet for a glimpse of what NOTAMS looks like.) An airline source tells News Not Noise the system starting having difficulties late Tuesday; things got worse overnight and the FAA finally issued that rare nationwide ground stop around 720am Wednesday.
Why did it happen: Airline pilots say a full failure of NOTAM is extremely unusual. So what caused it?
First thought: cyberattack. We’re all that paranoid, right? The White House says there is no evidence of a cyberattack, but Canada’s air traffic system experienced a similar failure in its NOTAM system for 90 minutes this morning. Also today a cyber “incident” hit the Royal Mail, the UK’s version of the Postal Service. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says he isn’t ruling out the possibility of a cyber attack and he’s launched an inquiry to find out what caused the outage.
Second, less sexy, explanation: Aging infrastructure and outdated tech. Industry critics say our flight computer systems "desperately need to be modernized" and "lag decades behind peer countries." Secretary Buttigieg didn't dispute this. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that just passed includes $25-billion for the FAA to upgrade many things, including its tech infrastructure but that will take time.
The politics: The FAA is up for Congressional reauthorization this year and this outage is certain to get lots of attention. Republicans are denouncing the DOT and Secretary Buttigieg. The White House is also making it clear Buttigieg owns this mess. Note that Congress still hasn’t confirmed Biden’s pick to run the FAA.
Are you safe? The White House Press Secretary insists the “NOTAMs system is continuously being updated,” and an airline source points out that the government did the right thing by grounding planes while they got the system fully online.
A note of encouragement: There are reports of something we haven’t witnessed at the airport for a while: Civility. A stranded passenger, Jess McIntosh told the New York Times “everybody was being really helpful. Nobody was yelling at TSA Agents.” Also, the memes have been divine. Enjoy here, here, and here. News Not Noise will continue to monitor this story as it develops.
