Planes failed to take off, reason explained: ‘Files deleted by staff’

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced last week that the cause of the system malfunction that led to the suspension of domestic flights has been determined. “The staff inadvertently deleted the files while working to restore synchronization between the primary database and the backup database,” the statement said.

The FAA suspended all domestic flights last week due to a malfunction in the flight control system (NOTAM), which alerted pilots to potential hazards in their flight path. Once the problem was resolved, flights resumed. The FAA announced that the cause of the malfunction was determined during the investigation.

In the written statement made on the official FAA website, the following statements were included:

“The FAA’s review of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system outage last week determined that contract personnel had inadvertently deleted files while working to restore synchronization between the primary and backup databases. . So far no evidence of a cyberattack or malicious intent has been found. The FAA continues to investigate the circumstances of the outage. The FAA made necessary repairs to the system and took steps to make the NOTAM system more durable.” (DHA)