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FAA NOTAM System Outage

fly.faa.gov

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Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#211

Post by buffington »

sandworm101 wrote: post #112

I've got a trip to take in a couple weeks. I have a choice: 4 hours of driving followed by two regional flights. Or just forget flying and drive 16 hours point to point. Between today's issues and all the headaches at YVR over the holidays, driving 16 hours seems more comfortable and less stressful than rolling the dice with regional airline travel. I would rather be stuck driving my car for a day than spend a day sl…

I used to need to be in a city every other week that was only a 1.5 hour flight.

I decided to see if driving might get me there in comparable time if I compared when I closed my front door to when I opened the door of my destination.

I was surprised to find that the time it took as almost the same. That's because flying requires:

* start drive to airport (45 minutes) * park and get on a shuttle (15 minutes) * get to gate (30 minutes) * wait (60 minutes because I'm early by an hour) * fly (1:45) * taxi to gate (5-45 minutes) * walk to light rail stop (10 minutes) * ride light rail too stop (45 minutes) * walk to destination (15 minutes)

Door to door flying: about 6 hours

Driving:

* start driving (6 hours) * fuel stop (15 minutes) * park (15 minutes) * arrive

If I didn't obey speed limits, I could cut an hour or more off that 6 hours.

That said, I still preferred flying. Hard to take a nap or space out while driving for 6 hours.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#212

Post by watersb »

ru552 wrote: post #113
watersb wrote: post #67

REALLY IMPORTANT NOTAMS tend to alert pilots to RESTRICTED AIRSPACE or AREAS OF UNUSUAL AIR OPERATIONS. You can't fly anywhere near the President of the United States, the movements of which can change from day to day. We get NOTAMS about military aircraft operations; often military airspace which is usually permitted may be shut down for a week or so. Wildfire tanker operations or other natural emergencies can close…

They are also for notifying pilots of potential caution areas. I used to operate a 550+ meter tower and when I had a tower light out, I had to file a NOTAM.

(Holy cow, just did remedial maths: 550m is a Large Number! Would like to know more details.)

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#213

Post by themitigating »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #199
smlacy wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you? Your arguments are classic whataboutism, and conspiracy/fearmongering. Read up on the Burden of Proof. If you make outlandish claims, they have to come with substantial evidence.

That's kind of their point... The FAA is making an outlandish claim, we'd like to see their proof.

How is it an outlandish claim that one of their system's crashed? Is it unusual that a computer system crashes even if it's a rare event?

If a website went down and the company said "the system crashed" you wouldn't believe them without proof? What could the FAA provide you to prove this?

What makes you distrust the FAA?

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#214

Post by themitigating »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #201
smlacy wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your belief isn't evidence, and you shouldn't present it as such.

A vague statement from the FAA isn't evidence either, just like a statement from the CDC not to buy masks isn't evidence they don't work to protect against a virus. And I'm not claiming I have any evidence other than publicly observable patterns relating to both technical glitches and government transparency. I'm speculating, based on the fact that technical glitches usually occur more than once every 21 years (or ev…

"and that government agencies often lie to the public"

Technical glitches occur more frequently in what type of systems?

What's often? Why are you grouping all government agencies when evaluating their trust?

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#215

Post by netsharc »

ineedasername wrote: post #151
maxcan wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Double nit: this was not a misuse the deprecated term "The Ukraine" but the correct use of 'the' attaching to "Ukrainian one" referring to the NOTAM basically telling everyone to remain clear of Ukrainian airspace.

nit RFI: What is it about "Ukraine" (phonetically maybe?) that makes me, a westerner in the US, want to put a "the" before it every time I reference it as a country instead of just, you know, using the name of the country? I don't go around calling other proper nouns "the" (mostly). I don't call my son "Hey there, the Bob, how was school today?" (his name is not bob). But if I had named my son Ukraine then I feel lik…

In German (maybe some other languages too?) it's common to use "the" to refer to a 3rd person, so if Bob's sister Charlotte came home from school but not Bob, she could say "The Bob went to the mall".

Seems like it's the same way in Finnish, Finnish F1 driver Mika Häkkinen referred to Michael Schumacher as "The Michael".

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#216

Post by TechBro8615 »

themitigating wrote: post #213
squeaky-clean wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of their point... The FAA is making an outlandish claim, we'd like to see their proof.

How is it an outlandish claim that one of their system's crashed? Is it unusual that a computer system crashes even if it's a rare event? If a website went down and the company said "the system crashed" you wouldn't believe them without proof? What could the FAA provide you to prove this? What makes you distrust the FAA?

Either it's extremely unusual (once in 21+ years), or happens more often than that but only this time did they decide to ground all planes in response to the glitch. In the latter case, then they must not be telling the whole truth, because they're omitting whatever is "different" about this time that changed their response to a glitch in this system.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#217

Post by travisjungroth »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #173

[flagged]

Your reasoning seems sort of circular.

I’m sure there have been many technical problems in all of the FAA’s systems in 20 years. And, yes, none have caused a full ground stop. But you seem to doubt it happened because it hasn’t happened before.

Something to keep in mind is the NOTAM system never had an outage like this in those 20 years. And a full ground stop in the event of no one getting NOTAMs is completely reasonable.

So, I think you’re only left with two options: 1. NOTAM system went down by natural failure 2. NOTAM system was taken down intentionally to cause a full ground stop.

I’ll consider them independently then compare. Option 1 to me seems incredibly likely given a long enough timeline. It’s easy to say now in retrospect, but I think an 80% probability of a multi hour outage over 20 years is my best guess. These systems mostly go back to the 60s and are held together with bailing wire and bubblegum.

Option 2 is a hell of a blast radius for not much effect. You want to secretly keep an airplane from flying for a few hours so you… ground every plane in the US? There seem to be easier ways to go about that. Maybe you want no one to be in the air for a few hours? The motivations that would require that are beyond “special operations mission” and into “testing alien technology” territory. I’m not sure this even achieved the goal of putting everyone on the ground. It may have only been takeoffs.

Anyway, I think this comparison is hard. I mean, it’s easy for me. 80% on 1, 0.1% on 2, so 800:1.

But it’s probably hard to change someone’s mind about this. You either think the government is willing to ground every plane in the US for a few hours and lie about it plus has motivation to do so or you don’t. I’m probably not going to sway many people with the argument “yes, these systems are essential and yes, they are shitty” but maybe I will.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#218

Post by andrelaszlo »

mjevans wrote: post #187
ineedasername wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it's the sort of thing that's borderline useless right up until the moment it's absolutely essential. Like the smoke alarms in my house, which are actually wired up to mains so don't technically need a battery, but they still have to have a battery in them and will give high pitched chirps ever few minutes when the battery is dead. And since there's so many in the house, and the chirp only comes every few…

I've had way, way, way, too many 'chirp' at 4am situations in my life. The alarms have _literally_ trained me like Pavlov's dogs that it is _always_ a false alarm, to the point where my sleep deprived brain stumbles through the door blindly into the hallway without even checking if there's heat or smoke. Some of the other solutions here like cry wolf only if battery low _and_ power's out, or a dedicated LED to indica…

I started replacing the batteries in all of them as soon as the first one starts beeping.

I figure the batteries won't last much longer in the others and I don't need to go hunting.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#219

Post by michaelcampbell »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #201
smlacy wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your belief isn't evidence, and you shouldn't present it as such.

A vague statement from the FAA isn't evidence either, just like a statement from the CDC not to buy masks isn't evidence they don't work to protect against a virus. And I'm not claiming I have any evidence other than publicly observable patterns relating to both technical glitches and government transparency. I'm speculating, based on the fact that technical glitches usually occur more than once every 21 years (or ev…

> You are similarly free to disagree with me or defer to your blind fealty to a government agency.

That's a pretty absurd set of choices.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#220

Post by controlller »

snake_doc wrote: post #89

For anyone looking for previous FAA outages: In 2014, an U-2 plane’s flight plan crashed LAX’s ERAM system because the system ran out of memory. https://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/default/files/FAA%20Actions%20...

LAX, an air traffic control tower, does not employ ERAM. Los Angeles Center (ZLA), the overlying air route traffic control center, does.
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