Acting FAA chief to testify before US Senate panel on computer outage

The acting head of the FAA will testify on Feb. 15 before the US Senate Commerce Committee on a Jan. 11 computer system outage that disrupted more than 11,000 US flights, sources told Reuters. Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen told lawmakers last month that the agency has made a change in the system to prevent a corrupt file from damaging a backup database, after the agency found that the outage occurred when contract personnel "unintentionally deleted files." The outage prompted the FAA to halt departing flights for about two hours, the first nationwide ground stop since the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the United States. The FAA did not immediately comment late Wednesday. Nolen has been acting FAA administrator since April 1. Last month, the FAA told lawmakers it had revoked access to a pilot messaging database by contractor personnel who unintentionally deleted files in the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) database. The NOTAM system provides pilots, flight crews and other users of US airspace with critical safety notices. Nolen told lawmakers that attempts to restore those files contributed to the outage and since then the FAA had adopted a one-hour delay in synchronizing databases that should prevent data errors from immediately reaching the backup database. The FAA also said it "now requires at least two individuals to be present during the maintenance of the NOTAM system, including one federal manager."<br/>