The Federal Aviation Administration is working to find the cause of a major computer outage that grounded all planes in the country for several hours last week, causing numerous flight delays. Kansas Republican Senator, Jerry Moran says the system likely needs more updates. The outage last Wednesday, January 11th, occurred in the FAA’s “Notice to Air Missions” System, which informs pilots about weather conditions that could impact the safety of their flights. The failure delayed more than 7,000 flights across the country.
Moran says the FAA already gets funding to upgrade its safety systems on a regular basis. He says the question that needs to be answered is…. Is that updating occurring fast enough? And the answer to that question will be better determined by why the system shut down. Federal officials say there’s no indication the outage was caused by a cyber attack. Some reports indicate that a corrupted file may have been inadvertently uploaded into the system, leading to the shutdown.
