The FAA has publicly named the contracting company whose employees it believes unintentionally deleted files that led to the Notice to Air Missions (Notam) system outage\u00a0on Jan. 11. <\/p>\n
The outage compelled the agency to implement the first ground stop since 9\/11.<\/p>\n
The agency informed Congress that the contractor that services the Notam system is Virgina-based Spatial Front.<\/p>\n
“All personnel from Spatial Front directly involved in the deletion have lost access to FAA buildings and systems while we complete our investigation,” the FAA said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The agency had previously stated that a preliminary review led to the determination that the outage occurred after contracted workers unintentionally deleted Notam files while working to correct synchronization between the live primary database and a backup database.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The FAA says it has found no evidence of a cyberattack or malicious intent related to the outage.<\/p>\n
The Jan. 11 ground stoppage was over by 9 a.m. Eastern time, but it contributed to more than 2,800 flight cancellations and more than 10,000 delays of flights to, from and within the U.S. that day.<\/p>\n
Last week, the House nearly unanimously passed a bill directing the FAA to establish a task force to review the Notam system and provide recommendations for improving the system.<\/p>\n
The FAA said that it is using Virginia-based contractor Concept Solutions to modernize the Notam system.\u00a0<\/p>\n