Human error caused chaos at US airports – Employee deleted data folder

A computer outage that grounded passenger planes at airports across the U.S. on Wednesday and caused problems for more than 11,000 flightswas caused by a procedural error related to a data file, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced yesterday, Thursday.

The FAA announced that its preliminary analysis “showed that a data folder was destroyed by personnel who failed to follow the relevant procedures. The system is working normally,” but did not answer further questions about the details of the breakdown that caused the problem.

More than 11,300 flights were canceled or delayed Wednesday in the first grounding of domestic aircraft in nearly two decades.

The failure of her computer system FAA prevented airports from issuing updated flight safety instructions to warn pilots of potential hazards, such as runway closures, system shutdowns, and construction, causing a temporary halt to flights.

FAA officials had earlier attributed the problem to a corrupted database file in the system that provides pilots with flight safety updates known as Notices to Air Missions (NOTAMs), but stressed that no evidence of a cyber attack had been found.

The same file caused a problem in both the main system and the backup, said anonymous sources briefed on the FAA’s review.

Airline operations normalized after almost a day.

Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, American Airlines Group Inc and Southwest Airlines Co said their operations were normalized yesterday.

The problem is deeper

The FAA asked Congress last year for $29.4 million to upgrade its computers, but also to speed up the creation of a separate storage system for flight safety warnings “and to eliminate the use of outdated software that supports the operation of the US national airspace system.”

“Modernizing the FAA will have a large financial cost, and its costs will have to be met through a combination of taxes on air travel that affect all airlines, but also the performance of the largest airlines,” Bernstein, the brokerage firm, noted.

Arjun Garg, a former chief adviser who served as the agency’s deputy commander, said it was too early to draw any conclusions about the incident, saying the agency did the right thing in grounding the flights.

Garg, now a partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells, said the incident is a reminder that the FAA has fallen into an annual reimbursement cycle that makes it difficult to plan and implement large multiyear programs such as air traffic control upgrades.

A separate outage in Canada on Wednesday temporarily prevented the electronic distribution of flight safety updates to pilots, caused by the failure of a single information technology (IT) system, an airport industry source told Reuters.

NAV Canada, the private company that manages Canada’s civil air navigation system, said it was investigating the cause of the problem, which is not believed to be US-related.

Flights in Canada were not affected by the NAV Canada outage, as new flight safety updates can be received or distributed by fax, telephone or regular radio frequencies.

The FAA has been without a permanent commander since March. The Senate has not held a single hearing on President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the FAA. This is Denver International Airport Executive Director Phil Washington. President Biden confirmed his choice in Washington last week.

Senators Jerry Moran and Amy Klobuchar spoke with FAA Acting Administrator Billy Nolen about the outage, and Nolen said that “his agency is working to determine the cause of the failure and ensure that this does not happen again.” Moran said in a statement.

Shares of American Airlines closed up 9.7% after forecasting higher earnings in the fourth quarter of 2022. Shares of United, Southwest and Delta rose between 2.8% and 7.5%.

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