US lawmakers press FAA chief on computer outage, nationwide ground stop

US lawmakers pressed the acting head of the FAA Thursday on steps the agency was taking to ensure there would be no repeat of a pilot messaging database failure that led to the first nationwide ground stop since 2001. "It was just purely a screwup," said Representative Sam Graves, who heads the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, after emerging from a meeting with Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen. On Wednesday, the FAA told lawmakers it had revoked access to a pilot messaging database by contractor personnel involved in a file deletion that disrupted more than 11,000 flights on Jan. 11. Asked if he was confident it would not happen again, Graves said: "I can't say that. It's the FAA. It's a government-run operation." Graves plans to hold a Feb. 7 hearing that will look at aviation safety issues. Nolen declined to comment after the briefing. Representative Rick Larsen, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said Thursday's briefing had been a high-level look at what went wrong and what the agency was doing to ensure it did not happen again. "I don't understand how trained people" can make the deletion error," Larsen said. "The investigation will hopefully explain how someone zigged instead of zagged."<br/>