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Senators grilled the head of the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday, seeking answers after a string of safety incidents and an FAA computer outage that caused the cancellation of thousands of flights have renewed concerns over the safety and reliability of air travel.<\/p>\n
Almost one week after the Southwest holiday meltdown hearing<\/a>, acting FAA head Billy Nolen testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation regarding the computer outage that led the agency to issue a ground stop.<\/p>\n The incident halted all air traffic for the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It also followed a spate of safety incidents that have garnered national headlines \u2014 and have caught the attention of the committee.<\/p>\n \u201cThese incidents are concerning,\u201d commerce committee chair Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said at the hearing. \u201cThey impact Americans’ confidence in our aviation system, and our aviation system infrastructure is critical to American safety and security.\u201d<\/p>\n Nolen told the Senate panel in prepared remarks that the FAA implemented a set of new protocols to ensure such an incident doesn\u2019t happen again. He also urged Congress to invest more in the FAA\u2019s modernization efforts.<\/p>\n Some of these protocols include \u201ca synchronization delay to ensure that bad data from a database cannot affect a backup database\u201d and ensuring more than one individual is \u201cpresent and engaged in oversight when work on the database occurs.\u201d<\/p>\n On Jan. 11, the FAA experienced<\/a> a Notice to Air Missions \u2014 the alert system pilots use \u2014 outage due to a contractor unintentionally deleting<\/a> files during an update. The outage led to the delay of thousands of flights, only two weeks after Southwest canceled<\/a> almost 17,000 flights.<\/p>\n The NOTAM outage spurred criticisms over the FAA\u2019s antiquated technology, some of which relies on 30-year-old infrastructure and software, according to Nolen.<\/p>\n Nolen also shared that the FAA is significantly ramping up its efforts to replace its outdated NOTAM system because of the outage, aiming to completely replace the system by 2025.<\/p>\n