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Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

nco.ncep.noaa.gov

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Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#171

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

blktiger wrote: post #129
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #123

One thing though, these types of things can't be helpful to the political future of Pete Buttigieg. Between airline issues and rail strikes and shipping/port issues, he has been very politically unlucky.

Not necessarily, if he gets a lot of airtime and is seen as identifying and fixing problems he could get a real big boost. Most of the problems the Transportation Secretary has to deal with are the fault of aging systems, a limited budget from congress, etc.

> if he gets a lot of airtime and is seen as identifying and fixing problems he could get a real big boost.

The thing is he is not. Even with the negotiations over the railroad strike, he was not talked about. It was Joe Biden in the news.

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#172

Post by flandish »

jjulius wrote: post #147
flandish wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume I am American? Or are you speaking generally? “We” don’t know the causes, only what was reported. I’ve worked on a lot of old systems needing to be updated, migrated, or sunset. For sure it’s 99% of the time due to management being lazy. I get that. And I know correlation/causation, but hey my orig comment was a simple curiosity. Sure, my nature distrusts what a corporation says because it’s always…

>Sure, my nature distrusts what a corporation says because it’s always filtered through stockholder functions OK, but in Southwest's case, you had former and current employees from various positions within the company publicly coming out and lambasting Southwest for the failure to actually invest in upgrading their scheduling system that led to the outage. It wasn't just a corporation coming out and going, "Here's wh…

> invest in upgrading

Meaning - a system is so old, slow, bug, and vulnerability prone a bad actor can pen-test around and mess stuff up?

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#173

Post by acdha »

hackmiester wrote: post #105
acdha wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NOTAM system was apparently running on old SPARC hardware so I’d easily believe that they haven’t been given enough budget to hire engineers and are basically keeping the lights on. One peril of the government funding model is that it’s effective at shoveling money to contracting companies but not having skilled oversight, so you tend to see lots of big projects which founder under their own weight.

I would love to see more information about the underlying architecture of the NOTAM system, if you can recall where you saw that.

Not sure how reliable this guy is but it’s certainly easy to believe:

https://twitter.com/PatrickMoorhead/status/16139375120027729...

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#174

Post by ceejayoz »

drstewart wrote: post #145
ceejayoz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presidents propose budgets (the CBO even uses the term "the President's budget"; https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58417 ), sign them into law, threaten Congress with vetos, and have significant influence over their party as a whole. Trump in particular was successful in drubbing opponents out of office; Liz Cheney went from #3 in House leadership to a pariah largely overnight.

This is all a lot of weasel words to avoid the fact that the President does not pass the budget, and their proposals bear little resemblance to what actually get passed. Liz Cheney is completely irrelevant here. Post FAA's ACTUAL BUDGET over the last 8 years and let us judge.

I'm not the one who made the budget assertion; you're mad at someone else.

I'm just contesting the idea that the President has no power over the US Federal budget.

(I'm of the general opinion that the FAA is fairly well funded, has been very effective at its mission, and could still do with some specific capital projects to modernize non-sexy stuff like NOTAM and METAR handling.)

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#175

Post by ceejayoz »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #171
blktiger wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, if he gets a lot of airtime and is seen as identifying and fixing problems he could get a real big boost. Most of the problems the Transportation Secretary has to deal with are the fault of aging systems, a limited budget from congress, etc.

> if he gets a lot of airtime and is seen as identifying and fixing problems he could get a real big boost. The thing is he is not. Even with the negotiations over the railroad strike, he was not talked about. It was Joe Biden in the news.

That's fairly normal. Secretaries who become The Story tend to find that's not a good spot, even if it's for positive reasons.

Buttigieg's biggest asset is likely his ability to get on Fox News for an interview and steamroller over their usual rhetorical tactics.

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#176

Post by acdha »

pookha wrote: post #94
acdha wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NOTAM system was apparently running on old SPARC hardware so I’d easily believe that they haven’t been given enough budget to hire engineers and are basically keeping the lights on. One peril of the government funding model is that it’s effective at shoveling money to contracting companies but not having skilled oversight, so you tend to see lots of big projects which founder under their own weight.

NOTAM could be run from a pre-historic Toshiba mainframe. it's static. Doesn't need billions in funding.

It doesn’t need billions but it needs enough for dedicated staffing. Many federal agencies have the problem that they’re not given general funding for staff but are given money for large contract projects. It’s not uncommon for that to be structured in a way that, say, a big project has rooms full of developers, PMs, testers, etc. but something small has like one dude keeping it going when they can find time and a stream of unanswered requests to management asking go either fund or decommission it, hire a replacement for people who retired, etc. or that the big project which was supposed to replace it is years overdue.

I would not be surprised to learn that this was the case here, too.

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#178

Post by dpifke »

teeray wrote: post #40
zackbloom wrote: post #12

Unlike the NOTAM outage, a METAR outage will and should actually affect flights. Without weather at your destination it becomes impossible to know if it’s safe to land there. The forecasts (TAF) are actually used more in flight planning, but actual weather is very valuable while enroute, when not close enough to hear weather over the radio from the destination airport.

Unrelated to aviation, but I actually find METARs and TAFs are useful for hiking and skiing. I use the altimeter settings for my altimeter when hiking, and knowing the altitude of cloud layers is useful to know what the visibility will be like on the mountain (you have to do a bit of math with the airport elevation and the mountain’s elevation, but hey—it works!).

In the era before cell-phone internet, being able to call the automated weather reporting station at the nearest airport and have it read out conditions was hugely useful.

For folks who haven't seen what's in a METAR/TAF: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/weather/asos/ (By default, clicking a station gives you the abbreviated format; you can select the "decode" radio button and click "update" to translate it into English.)

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#179

Post by gnarbarian »

mayormcmatt wrote: post #167
gnarbarian wrote: post #162

METARs are perpetually down. one funny thing about them, they are deemed to be a critical service which requires something like 99.99% uptime to be in compliance with the FAA regulations governing service delivery. to get around this, a METAR is considered up as long as it has power, regardless as to whether it itsproducing data or providing accurate readings. the technology was certified and frozen in the 90s. many…

I'm very interested in this after reading your account, but couldn't find additional information online. Do you have sources we could look at?

https://medium.com/faa/faa-testing-new-system-to-increase-we...

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#180

Post by mshake2 »

gnarbarian wrote: post #162

METARs are perpetually down. one funny thing about them, they are deemed to be a critical service which requires something like 99.99% uptime to be in compliance with the FAA regulations governing service delivery. to get around this, a METAR is considered up as long as it has power, regardless as to whether it itsproducing data or providing accurate readings. the technology was certified and frozen in the 90s. many…

At this point I'm just waiting for the country to collapse under bureaucracy.
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