The FAA asked in a statement for time "to allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information." The FAA has said it systems was coming back online but that the NOTAM systems was still being restored.
The NOTAM mechanism is used by the FAA to deliver essential information that is not known far enough in advance to be publicised by any other means, according to the civil aviation body's website.
In aviation, NOTAMS are essential for the safe continuation of global air travel, and these essential notices and directives ultimately keep the world’s aviation sector, specifically flight crew and all personnel concerned with flight operations, informed and up to speed with latest air travel related directives, operational updates, security, weather and warnings.
With a system failure effecting NOTAMS, operations will be disrupted almost immediately and this will soon be felt elsewhere across the world, including for flights waiting to depart to the US.
Although many flights take place without needing to see one of those notices, it’s important that NOTAM messages reach the pilots, who are trained to check for them.
The FAA also operates the nation’s air traffic control system, with air traffic controllers using radar to track aircraft in their airspace and radio communications with their cockpits to guide them safely. The computer systems that are the backbone of ATC system have also been known to go down. But when that happens, it typically only affects one region of country, not the entire nation’s airspace.
The UN Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has been leading an effort to overhaul the system to make it easier for airlines and pilots to filter the most important warnings and present them in clearer language.
In July 2017, an Air Canada jet landed on the wrong runway at San Francisco’s airport and came within seconds of colliding with four other planes. The notice of the closure of one of the two runways at the airport had been flagged in the pre-flight NOTAM – on page eight of a 27-page briefing – and missed by the pilots.
Wednesday’s FAA outage which caused the disruption comes little over a week after the Department of Transportation opened an investigation into Southwest Airlines for its broad cancellation of flights over the Christmas holiday.
Transport Secretary Buttigieg released his own statement announcing that he was working with FAA officials to investigate.
“I have been in touch with FAA this morning about an outage affecting a key system for providing safety information to pilots,' the Transportation Secretary said.
The White House said that US President Joe Biden had been briefed on the outage by Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. "There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a tweet. The US Department of Transportation is conducting an investigation, she said.
An investigation into Wednesday’s outage will consider all potential causes, cyber included. The world has been witnessing a steady increase in cyber-attacks against all sectors, and aviation has been no exception, being characterised by its extensive interconnectivity and complexity, its high level of media exposure, and its critical role in the socio-economic development of countries.
Over the years, and in line with the continuous growth of demand for air transport, the civil aviation sector went through several digital transformations aimed at leveraging the power of technology to enhance the sector's efficiency and capacity. This allowed it to sustain fast growth rates while remaining safe and secure. However, these digital advances exposed the sector to cybersecurity threats across all stakeholders, where a successful cyber-attack might have negative impacts on financials, reputations, continuity of services, and even on the safety and security of people and facilities.
