It’s been a tough and tumultuous time for travel that continued this morning after the US Federal Aviation Administration grounded all departing on Wednesday morning.
Planes were grounded across the country after the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions system crashed. The system is responsible for alerting pilots and other personnel about airborne issues and other airport delays.
CBS Travel Editor Peter Greenberg joined News Talk 830 WCCO’s Chad Hartman to discuss the reasoning behind the planes being grounded, political fallout, not having a backup plan, why the airlines bear no responsibility and more.
Greenberg says that, without doubt, the NOTAM system is to blame for what happened today, being that it is over 30 years old.
“It’s been around for a long time. It’s essential before a plane can be dispatched. To give the pilots real time information on conditions and hazards on the airports they are flying to.”
When the system failed this morning at around 4 a.m. EST, Greenberg said that the FAA did something “almost unprecedented” by ordering a ground stop of all departing planes for the whole country.
“The last time they did anything close to that, it was actually more severe, of course. It was Sept. 11, 2001,” Greenberg said.
Greenberg said that the FAA has been claiming to be updating their systems, calling it “nextgen.” This is something he says is ironic, being that they have waited so long to do so that now two generations have passed.
“The problem is congress can allocate money, but the way the FAA moves, they take such a slow time in testing and improving a system that by the time they would actually implement it, that system would be outdated already,” he said. “We’re talking for seven or eight years.”
Another reason Greenberg says that flights had to be shut down was the absence of a backup system to cover for NOTAM going down, despite so much relying on it.
The main issue Greenberg says he sees with all of this is the murky direction on what the FAA does. He says that while Republicans and Democrats point fingers at each other, both parties have failed to do something with the administration over the last 30 years.
Greenberg says that to prevent further issues like this from happening again and to make air travel smoother, something needs to be done.
“They’re going to have to figure out the real role of the FAA,” Greenberg said. “Is it their job to enforce and enact regulation and safety, or to promote the business of aviation? And it better not be the latter.”
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