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Airlines for America has expressed its support for the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) initiative to modernize the Notice to Air Missions system (NOTAM), emphasizing its significance in maintaining operational safety. This endorsement was conveyed in a post on X.
According to the Associated Press, the FAA’s NOTAM system is responsible for distributing essential safety alerts, such as airspace restrictions and runway hazards, to pilots before and during flights. A critical outage in January 2023 led to the first nationwide ground stop since September 11, 2001, resulting in delays or cancellations of over 11,000 flights. This incident prompted widespread scrutiny and underscored the urgent need to overhaul the outdated system, which relies on technology from the 1990s.
Reuters reports that the FAA plans to deploy a fully modernized NOTAM database system by September 2025. The upgrade aims to provide secure, cloud-based data access to pilots and air traffic control personnel, ensuring faster and more accurate safety notifications. The new platform responds directly to Congressional mandates and FAA Reauthorization directives following the 2023 outage and related hearings.
