US FAA pilot safety messaging system resumes operations

A key system that provides safety messages to pilots resumed operating on Sunday morning after an outage that began the previous night, the Federal Aviation Administration said, in the latest difficulty for the U.S. aviation system in the past week.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Sunday the FAA's "Notice to Air Mission," or NOTAM, system is old and needs an upgrade. The system went down late on Saturday, prompting the agency to set up a hotline to send notices every 30 minutes with updates to airlines. 

"We are investigating the root cause of the outage," the FAA said in a statement on Sunday.

The NOTAM system provides pilots, flight crews and other users of U.S. airspace with critical safety notices. It could include items such as taxiway lights being out at an airport, nearby parachute activity or a specific runway being closed for construction.

"There was minimal disruption," Duffy told CNN's "State of the Union" program. "There's a process in place right now to get this system fixed. We want to expedite that and get this new system in place. This is an old system that needs to be upgraded."

Duffy had said late on Saturday that the issue could have led to some flight delays on Sunday. FlightAware, a company that tracks flights, said there were 1,133 delays of U.S. flights on Sunday. It is not clear how many were related to the NOTAM outage.

A NOTAM outage in January 2023 led to the first nationwide U.S. ground stop since 2001, disrupting more than 11,000 flights. The FAA said in 2023 it planned to discontinue an older NOTAM system by mid-2025.

According to agency officials, an FAA contractor unintentionally deleted files in the NOTAM system, causing the 2023 outage.

The U.S. aviation system has faced a difficult week.

On Wednesday, an American Airlines passenger jet and a military helicopter collided near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, killing 67 people, the first fatal U.S. passenger airline crash since 2009 and the deadliest U.S. air disaster since 2001.

On Friday, a medical evacuation plane crashed soon after takeoff in Philadelphia with a child and five others on board. All died as did a person on the ground.