US lawmakers call FAA outage 'unacceptable,' demand a fix

A group of more than 120 US lawmakers told the FAA its computer outage on Wednesday that disrupted 11,000 flights was "completely unacceptable" and demanded the agency explain how it will avoid future incidents. House Transportation Committee Chair Sam Graves and the top Democrat on the panel Rick Larsen said in a Friday letter from committee and other House colleagues to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg that they intend to "conduct vigorous oversight of the Department of Transportation’s plan to prevent these disruptions from occurring again." Lawmakers want details of what went wrong with a pilot messaging database that led to the first nationwide grounding of departing flights since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They want Buttigieg to provide an "estimated cost to commercial airlines and passengers due to the delays resulting from the outage" even though Buttigieg has said the government will not compensate passengers for delays caused by an FAA computer issue. The House lawmakers want a briefing and detailed responses to questions including about the causes of the system failure, the FAA’s response to the problem and the redundancy built into the system. Buttigieg's office and the FAA did not immediately comment on Friday. <br/>