U.S. HOUSE PASSES BILL TO CREATE NOTAM SYSTEM TASK FORCE
March 22, 2023
On January 25, 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill known as the “NOTAM Improvement Act” aimed at identifying improvements to FAA’s Notice to Air Missions (“NOTAM”) pilot alert system. If enacted the Act would require the creation of a FAA task force including pilots, airline representatives, airport industry executives, union officials, air traffic control personnel, and other aviation industry and computer system experts that would review issues and propose solutions to improve the NOTAM system’s stability and prevent future cyberattacks. The task force would also be responsible for reviewing existing NOTAM regulations, reviewing the current methods for delivering NOTAMs and flight operations information, and making formal recommendations for improvements through a report to be submitted to Congress within one year of the task force’s establishment.
Passage of the Act by the U.S. House comes in direct response to an incident in January that forced the FAA to ground all U.S. flights for several hours because of a NOTAM system outage caused by the unintentional deletion of files by government contractors who were working to improve the NOTAM system’s database. We will continue to provide updates on the bill’s progress as we receive them.
If you have any questions, please contact Evelyn Sahr (esahr@eckertseamans.com 202-659-6622) or Drew Derco (dderco@eckertseamans.com 202-659-6665).
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