"Arcane and Difficult" Notice to Air Missions System Remains Constant Bugbear

As the smoke clears following the FAA's disastrous NOTAM problem earlier this month, a clear pattern of systemic issues comes into focus.

The widespread outage of the system led to a cascade of delays and grounded flights throughout the world on January 11th, with more than 10,000 flights delayed and 1,300 canceled altogether. Not even airports abroad were safe from the hassle, as the stackup of late American aircraft began to ripple throughout the international airspace system too. The FAA said the outage was the result of a mismanaged data transfer caused by a failure to follow procedures, but those familiar with the FAA's budgetary timeline say there's a clear pattern: The administration has been trying to fix the system for years.

Unfortunately, most of their recent efforts seem to be aimed at everything but the backbone of the NOTAM system, focusing instead on streamlining public awareness and utility of the notices. The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 included an overture towards updates of the NOTAM system, but focused on the creation of a public-facing, searchable database of notices on file. The following year, the Notice to Airmen Improvement Act of 2019 sought to build a workgroup to address the readability and presentation of NOTAMs, once again improving ease of use for pilots and airport staff outside the tower, but doing little to address the actual spine of air traffic control. Similarly, a 2021 bill aimed to do the same but failed to see a vote in the senate.

A recent Congressional Research Service report details the proposed 2023 FAA budget, mentioning that the FAA described the NOTAM system in no charitable terms even before the latest fiasco. "In its FY2023 budget estimate, FAA itself described the NOTAM repository as ‘failing vintage hardware’ and requested almost $30 million to accelerate the modernization of the Aeronautical Information Management Program that encompasses the NOTAM system." Evidently, the system sports the same problems that the public-facing NOTAMs do, as the report makes reference to FAA criticism calling it "arcane and difficult to use and interpret."

On the bright side, the January fiasco has certainly drawn an eye, there's no doubt that any bill including a NOTAM fix will be lavished with some measure of congressional and senatorial attention this time around. 

FMI: www.faa.gov