A U.S. FAA system that provides safety messages to pilots experienced an outage for several hours on Saturday before resuming operations, the agency and airlines said. The outage of the "Notice to Airmen" system for more than three hours on Saturday was due to a hardware issue. In early February, the system known as NOTAM also suffered a failure. The FAA said the main NOTAM system "experienced a temporary outage and the system was reset." The agency said it was "investigating the root cause ... closely monitoring the situation." The NOTAM system provides pilots, flight crews and other users of U.S. airspace with critical safety notices. It could include items such as taxiway lights being out at an airport, nearby parachute activity or a specific runway being closed for construction. "All active NOTAMs were available until the time of the outage," the FAA said. On Friday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he would announce a plan next week to drastically overhaul the aging U.S. air traffic control system. A NOTAM outage in January 2023 disrupted more than 11,000 flights in the first nationwide U.S. ground stop since 2001. A ground stop is an air traffic management initiative in which no aircraft meeting certain criteria can take off. The FAA said in 2023 it planned to discontinue an older NOTAM system by mid-2025.<br/>
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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy will unveil a plan next week to upgrade the aging, under-staffed U.S. air traffic control system next week, he said on Friday. Duffy said earlier this month that he planned to ask Congress for tens of billions of dollars for a multi-year effort to revamp Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control infrastructure, including buying new radar systems and new air traffic control terminals and boosting hiring after a series of aviation safety incidents raised alarm. Duffy said Friday that he had briefed President Donald Trump, who wants "to create a state-of-the-art, brand new air control system" and supports the reform plan.<br/>Duffy also wants new runway safety technology so controllers don't need to rely on binoculars to see airplanes and to end the use of floppy disks and other ancient technology. Last month, the U.S. aviation sector called for "robust emergency funding" from Congress for air traffic control technology and staffing after the collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines regional airliner in January that killed 67 people. Duffy wants a faster replacement of aging copper wire telecommunications gear and other upgrades. "We're going to go to fiber, wireless and satellite," he said this month, criticizing Verizon's VZ.N efforts.<br/>A persistent shortage of controllers has delayed flights and, at many facilities, controllers are working mandatory overtime and six-day weeks to cover shifts. The FAA is about 3,500 air traffic controllers short of targeted staffing levels and has about 10% fewer controllers than it did in 2012. The Government Accountability Office says the FAA must take urgent action to address aging air traffic control systems, saying that one-third are unsustainable.<br/>
Ten U.S. House of Representatives Democratic lawmakers on Friday urged the Pentagon to reduce military training flights in the Washington, D.C., area after a January mid-air collision between an American Airlines regional jet and a U.S. Army helicopter killed 67 people. The lawmakers, in a letter, said they also want the Pentagon to require use of a safety system known as ADS-B that was not operating on the Army helicopter at the time of the collision near Reagan Washington National Airport. "To the maximum extent practicable, military training flights should be conducted outside the National Capital Region," Representative Don Beyer and the other Democrats wrote. Civilian airplanes must use ADS-B to broadcast their location, but it appears the military is routinely failing to use the safety system in training flights, lawmakers said. Last Friday, the FAA imposed permanent restrictions on non-essential helicopter operations around Reagan. The FAA also barred helicopters and passenger jets from flying near each other. The FAA's actions followed two urgent safety recommendations made by the National Transportation Safety Board after the collision. The FAA also prohibited use of two smaller runways at the airport when helicopters conducting urgent missions are operating nearby. "VIP travel can often be feasibly substituted for vehicular travel or flight paths that route further outside of the region, and other helicopter flights are simply not necessary ... within this oversaturated airspace," wrote the lawmakers that include Representatives Steny Hoyer, Jamie Raskin, Suhas Subramanyam, Eleanor Holmes Norton and Gerry Connolly.<br/>
National Grid’s CE has insisted the electricity transmission network remained capable of feeding enough power to Heathrow throughout the airport’s closure last week, as airlines’ anger over the decision to shut down for nearly 24 hours grew. In his first comments since the fire on Thursday night, John Pettigrew told the Financial Times that while an “unprecedented” blaze knocked out the North Hyde substation, two others serving Heathrow were working throughout the incident. “There was no lack of capacity from the substations,” he said. “Each substation individually can provide enough power to Heathrow.” Heathrow closed for nearly all of Friday following the substation fire, causing disruption that is expected to cost airlines tens of millions of pounds. More than 1,300 flights were cancelled, affecting hundreds of thousands of passengers. The airport said that, while it is able to run full operations with power from only two substations, it had to “reconfigure” its internal electrical networks to safely make the switch. Heathrow’s CE Thomas Woldbye said over the weekend that the airport also had to safely restart thousands of its systems — from baggage belts to air bridges. He appeared to shift some blame to the power industry as he told the BBC that Heathrow would assess if it needed “a different level of resilience if we cannot trust that the grid around us is working the way it should”. But Pettigrew said: “Two substations were always available for the distribution network companies and Heathrow to take power.” He added it was a “question for Heathrow” as to why it took the action it did. “Losing a substation is a unique event — but there were two others available,” he said. “So that is a level of resilience.”<br/>
London’s Heathrow Airport resumed full operations on Saturday and ordered a probe into how it dealt with a power outage that shut Europe’s busiest air hub for almost a day as airlines warned of further delays and cancellations. British Airways, whose main hub is Heathrow, said it had operated around 90% of its schedule on Saturday and promised a “near-full” schedule for Sunday after chief executive Sean Doyle on Friday warned the “huge impact” would last days. The airport, the world’s fifth-busiest, had been due to handle 1,351 flights on Friday, flying up to 291,000 passengers. But the fire at a nearby electrical substation forced planes to be diverted to other airports and many long-haul flights returned to their point of departure. Britain’s energy ministry said on Saturday it had commissioned the National Energy System Operator to carry out an urgent investigation into the outage that raised questions about the resilience of the country’s critical infrastructure. Heathrow said it had tasked an independent board member, former transport minister Ruth Kelly, with undertaking a review of the airport’s crisis-management plan and its response to the incident with the aim of boosting resilience. Aviation experts said the last time European airports experienced disruption on such a large scale was the 2010 Icelandic volcanic ash cloud that grounded some 100,000 flights. “It has been absolutely insane”, said Amber Roden, a U.S. citizen getting married in three days’ time, after a number of her relatives had their flights cancelled.<br/>
The airline industry prepares for chaos. But that doesn’t make responding to it any less complicated. Carriers were working frantically on Friday to reroute flights after a power outage at Heathrow Airport in London, a global hub, left tens of thousands of passengers stranded. But the aviation system is deeply interconnected, and responding to such severe disruptions is a delicate balancing act. For airlines, moving even a small number of flights can have cascading effects. “They’re thinking not just in terms of a single day, but recovery,” said Dr. Michael McCormick, a professor of air traffic management at Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University, who managed the federal airspace over New York during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “They have to look at where passengers with bags, aircraft and aircrews need to be tomorrow, the next day, and the next day.” When crises occur, airlines’ network operation centers jump into overdrive. They are the nerve centers of the business — typically large, quiet, secure rooms with power backups and protections against severe weather and disasters. At large airlines, the operations centers are staffed around the clock with teams that monitor the weather, manage planes and flights, communicate with air traffic control, schedule crews and much more. Small disruptions can be handled surgically — a sick pilot can be replaced with an alternate on call nearby or a broken plane swapped out for another. But bigger disruptions like the one at Heathrow can require scrapping and reworking intricate plans while taking into account a wide range of limitations. When Southwest Airlines struggled to overcome the effects of severe weather during the winter holidays in late 2022, for example, it canceled thousands of flights over several days in order to move crews and planes to where they needed to be.<br/>
The closure of London’s Heathrow Airport due to a nearby fire on Friday has put the focus on the aviation industry’s ability to handle a crisis, according to a travel industry expert. At the time of writing, Heathrow remained shut after a fire at an electricity substation that caused a power outage on Friday. “The growth of the [aviation] industry is happening faster than the growth of infrastructure,” said Anita Mendiratta, founder of consultancy AM&A, who stressed that aviation needs to become more resilient to incidents like an energy supply disruption, or to geopolitical or weather events. The Heathrow outage is “putting a spotlight on the need to make sure that the entire network of energy supply for any ... airport around the world has sufficient capability to address a crisis,” Mendiratta said on Friday. “All of this is a very dramatic learning curve.” A back-up generator was also affected by the blaze, raising questions over the resilience of the supporting energy infrastructure, according to U.K. Energy Minister Ed Miliband, while Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) described Heathrow’s reliance on a “single” power source as a “clear planning failure” by the airport. In an emailed statement, Heathrow said it has multiple sources of energy. “Our back up systems are safety systems which allow us to land aircraft and evacuate passengers safely, but they are not designed to allow us to run a full operation,” Heathrow said. Mendiratta said the Heathrow incident would have a ripple effect for aviation that goes far beyond flight cancelations. She described the implications of the Heathrow incident as “very wide,” as the growth of aviation is outpacing the increase in supporting infrastructure, she said. Mendiratta described the growth of aviation globally as “massive.” “It is extreme in terms of how it has grown far beyond even 2019 rates,” she said. This raises questions over the industry’s resilience to unplanned weather or geopolitical events and whether the surrounding infrastructure can support it.<br/>
Aircraft lessor SMBC Aviation Capital has settled Irish lawsuits against more insurers over jets stranded in Russia following Western sanctions in 2022, a company spokesperson said on Friday. SMBC has discontinued proceedings against "certain insurers", including Fidelis, the spokesperson said in an email. The Irish Times on Friday reported that SMBC had reached agreement with Fidelis and was at an "advanced stage of resolution" with Chubb. The Irish Times also reported that CDB Aviation had also reached agreement with Fidelis and Ping An. A spokesperson for CDB Aviation declined to comment. The Irish Times also reported that all cases against "war risk" defendants in the case had now been settled. The case has treated "all-risk" and "war-risk" policies separately. SMBC had previously reached settlements with Swiss Re and Scor Europe, two of the 18 insurers it sued as part of a group of six lessors' Irish High Court action that began last June.<br/>
The Federal Government of Nigeria and the Canadian Government on Friday signed a Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) allowing passengers to travel on flights under a different airline’s code. While signing the agreement in Abuja on behalf of the Federal Government, the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, said the development is a significant milestone for the aviation industry. He explained that the agreement was not a full bilateral agreement, but a code-share agreement, which is an arrangement where two or more airlines market and sell seats on flights operated by another airline, allowing passengers to travel on flights under a different airline’s code. Keyamo further stated that Nigeria will designate airline operators to enhance this agreement. The Minister said that the agreement will go a long way in further strengthening the relationship between Canada and Nigeria. He therefore commended the Canadian authorities for signing the agreement in Nigeria, stating that it will save costs.<br/>
Japanese oil refiners believe concrete regulations and frameworks are needed to encourage airlines to use sustainable aviation fuel and develop supply chains to support decarbonization efforts, the head of the industry lobby group said on Friday. Cosmo Energy Holdings will launch Japan's first domestic production of SAF in April, a step toward the country's goal of replacing 10% of jet fuel with a cleaner alternative, though cost-cutting challenges remain. Japanese refiners must supply SAF equivalent to 10% of their aviation fuel sales by 2030 as part of the country's efforts to combat climate change, which aligns with global initiatives to cut carbon dioxide emissions from airplanes. But no mandatory scheme has been set for airlines, and the oil industry believes a system similar to the one applied to suppliers is also needed for consumers. "Regulations and frameworks on the supply side are relatively advanced, and we are making progress in building a supply chain," Shunichi Kito, president of the Petroleum Association of Japan, told a news conference. "But I believe that the user side, in this case, the airlines, also need similar regulations and frameworks," he added. Kito, who is also the president of Japan's second-largest oil refiner, Idemitsu Kosan, emphasized energy transition toward carbon neutrality requires a transformation across the entire supply chain - from suppliers to off-takers - making it different from conventional production and sales activities.<br/>
Donald Trump on Friday awarded Boeing the contract to build the US air force’s most sophisticated fighter jet, handing the company a much-needed win. The Next Generation Air Dominance program will replace Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor with a crewed aircraft built to enter combat alongside drones. The plane’s design remains a closely held secret, but would probably include stealth, advanced sensors and cutting-edge engines. The Seattle-based company beat out Lockheed Martin for the deal. Shares of Boeing were up 5% after the news. Lockheed’s shares fell nearly 6%. Reuters reported Boeing’s victory before the official announcement. Trump, the 47th US president, announced the winner from the White House, saying the new jet will be called the F-47. For Boeing, the win marks a reversal of fortune for a company that has struggled on both the commercial and defense sides of its business. It is a major boost for its St Louis, Missouri, fighter jet production business. The engineering and manufacturing development contract is worth more than $20bn. The winner will eventually receive hundreds of billions of dollars in orders over the contract’s multi-decade lifetime. NGAD was conceived as a “family of systems” centered around a sixth-generation fighter to counter adversaries such as China and Russia. Boeing’s commercial operations have struggled as it attempts to get its bestselling 737 Max jet production back up to full speed, while its defense operation has been weighed down by underperforming contracts for mid-air refueling tankers, drones and training jets.<br/>
The family of a whistleblower at Boeing who killed himself last year is suing the US plane manufacturer, alleging the company’s conduct caused his death. Boeing pushed John Barnett to his death by harassing and intimidating him after he raised safety concerns about the company’s plant building the 787 Dreamliner in Charleston, South Carolina, a wrongful death lawsuit filed in federal court in the state alleges. The world’s second-largest aeroplane maker has faced significant scrutiny over its safety during a years-long crisis started by two fatal crashes of its bestselling 737 Max aircraft in 2018 and 2019. Last year a door panel blew out of a Boeing plane in mid-air after engineers failed to replace crucial bolts, raising yet more concerns over the company’s safety culture. The crises have also raised questions over how Boeing treated people voicing concerns. Barnett was a quality manager at Boeing for nearly three decades, starting at Everett, Washington state, before his move to South Carolina. He took early retirement in 2017, at which point he was experiencing symptoms of depression and severe anxiety, according to the claim. He then shared concerns over Boeing’s safety processes with journalists, becoming known publicly as a whistleblower. His allegations included finding metal shavings near critical control wires, and problems with onboard oxygen systems.<br/>