WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate unanimously passed bipartisan legislation introduced by U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) – ranking member of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation and co-chair of the Senate Travel and Tourism Caucus – and U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) to help prevent Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) system outages.
The NOTAM Improvement Act would require the FAA to strengthen the resiliency and cybersecurity of the NOTAM system, which alerts pilots of safety and location hazards on flight routes. This bill follows a recent NOTAM system outage in January that grounded flights nationwide.
“The FAA has a responsibility to make certain air travel in our country is as safe and efficient as possible,” said Sen. Moran. “I am pleased by the swift passage of this legislation and urge my colleagues to quickly pass this in the House. The complete failure of the FAA’s NOTAM system stranded millions of Americans and was a warning of the need to strengthen and modernize our air travel system. This bill is an important first step to accomplish those goals.”
The task force created by the NOTAM Improvement Act would be composed of representatives from air carriers, airports and airline pilots, aircraft dispatchers and FAA personnel unions, as well as aviation safety and cybersecurity experts.
In January, Sens. Moran and Klobuchar spoke with FAA Acting Administrator Billy Nolen following the NOTAM system failure to discuss his agency’s efforts to identify the factors behind the system outage that grounded all flights nationwide and to prevent similar breakdowns from happening again.
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