The Federal Aviation Administration is accelerating the modernization of a safety system that alerts pilots and flight planners to changes in airspace.
According to a release, the FAA expects to deploy a new Notice to Air Missions service by September — much earlier than previously planned.
More than 4 million NOTAMs are issued annually, communicating changes such as runway closures or airspace obstructions.
Tower light outages are among the scenarios that prompt the filing of a NOTAM. For instance you may recall that after a helicopter struck a tower in Houston owned by SBA Communications last October, the company said it had filed a NOTAM indicating that the tower’s lights were inoperable.
But NOTAM outages — like one in January 2023 that grounded flights across the U.S. — have raised serious questions about the aging system. The FAA said that outage was due to a damaged database file.
“The NOTAM system is deeply outdated and showing serious cracks,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy in the release. “It’s time our technology enters the 21st century.”
Antiquated air traffic technology has come under even greater scrutiny this year following two plane crashes in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia in January, drawing attention from Vice President J.D. Vance.
The FAA says the modernization effort will enable near real-time data exchange, which allows for better dataflows and collaboration among stakeholders via a cloud-based system. The administration has selected CGI Federal to modernize and deploy the new NOTAM service.
More than 4 million NOTAMs are issued each year, according to the FAA.
