Nation Wide Outages Affect Air Travel

Before the recent airline outages, a nationwide flight delay had not happened since 9/11. 

“The FAA’s outage was the second major air travel disruption in less than a month and drew bipartisan criticism. Winter storms derailed holiday travel in late December, prompting widespread cancellations and a crisis at Southwest Airlines after it buckled from all the schedule changes,” CNBC said. 

The airline industry is still reeling from the impacts of the pandemic. Having staffing shortages, rising costs, and supply chain issues, how does this relate to airline outages?

 All of those factors were crucial to running the day-to-day operations, but the computing power behind it all got covered up.

“Despite moving to modernize their equipment, in some cases, airlines and the US government may still be reliant on technology that could be years or even decades old,” CNN Business stated.

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation, has dealt with criticism for his handling of the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration).

“Pete Buttigieg is a huckster but pretends to be a progressive, but is really just a corporate hack,” FAHS Senior Jacob Rauenzahn said. 

The outage was caused by the NOTAM system, used by all airlines operating within the U.S.

“The NOTAM System is used by the FAA to relay information to airlines regarding weather, ground conditions, etc,” USA Today said.

That information is vital for airlines to run efficiently and effectively. 

Examining what caused the delay has officials believing it was due to a corrupted system file.

“There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the President directed DOT to conduct a full investigation into the causes. The FAA will provide regular updates,” USA Today reported on Twitter.

Now that more problems have arisen recently in the airline industry, it shows that action needs to be taken in order to eliminate future issues.