The Federal Aviation Administration is modernizing a decades-old, critical safety system years ahead of schedule. The agency said Monday that a new Notice to Airmen, or NOTAM, will be delivered in the coming months.
“Americans deserve the best aviation system in the world,” commented Chris Rocheleau, administrator of the FAA. “We worked with the best and brightest and came up with an accelerated approach to bring our technology into the 21st Century.”
The FAA initially planned to develop and deploy a new NOTAM by 2030 but, according to the new schedule, CGI Federal is expected to deliver the modernized system by July. Deployment of the critical system is planned for September.
What Is NOTAM?
NOTAM is used to disseminate information about flight operations to relevant personnel across the National Airspace System. Details about temporary runway closures or obstructions, for instance, are communicated to pilots and flight planners through NOTAM.
Over 4 million notifications are issued per year.
In 2023, the critical necessity to modernize NOTAM was made apparent by an outage that forced the FAA to halt all domestic flight departures across the United States. The agency also had to use a backup system in February during another outage that authorities said caused “minimal disruptions” to flights.
“The Notice to Airmen system is deeply outdated and showing serious cracks”, stated Sean P. Duffy, secretary of transportation.
“It’s time our technology enters the 21st Century. NOTAM modernization is the first step as we work to deliver an all-new air traffic control system that makes air travel safer and more efficient,” he added.
New NOTAM
The modernized NOTAM is expected to facilitate near-real-time data exchange and improve stakeholder collaboration. It will be hosted on a cloud platform, which will support system resilience and scalability.
