Blocking of US flights: hypotheses and comments
Thousands of flights were delayed and hundreds more were canceled yesterday morning in the US. The FAA's investigation into the cause of the crash continues but the fault could lie with the federal aviation agency's antiquated pilot alert system. Facts and insights
Domestic blockade of flights in the USA caused by a corrupted database.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the agency that regulates civil aviation in the United States, said a disruption in its aviation mission alert system, which sends safety notifications and other important notifications to pilots, has caused disruptions in American air travel yesterday .
The FAA conducted a hard reset during the night of January 10 when the system crashed. The problem forced a 90-minute suspension for all flights departing from the United States. More than 10,000 flights have been delayed and more than 1,300 canceled so far, according to FlightAware, in the first nationwide ban on flights in nearly two decades.
The FAA's ground stop was lifted at 8:50 AM ET yesterday, January 11.
The FAA's antiquated pilot alert system could be to blame, Axios reports. The US Air Force relies on aging computers and infrastructure to run some of its systems. That infrastructure needs to be modernized to handle current demand, argues the US Travel Association (USTA). "America's transportation network is in dire need of significant upgrades," USTA President and CEO Geoff Freeman said today.
Many industry officials have compared the grounding to what happened after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Reuters points out. And on the incident, the president and CEO of Itway, an IT security company, Giovanni Andrea Farina, warns: "100% security does not exist", in Italy "the level can certainly be improved".
Here are facts, comments and analysis.
THE CAUSE OF THE STOP OF FLIGHTS IN THE USA
The computer problem that threw US air traffic into chaos yesterday morning was caused by a damaged database. This was reported by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which blocked all take-offs over US territory for hours due to the failure.
The affected system, Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM), sends alerts to pilots to inform them of conditions that could affect the safety of their flights. It is separate from the air traffic control system which keeps planes a safe distance from each other, but it is another vital aviation safety tool.
NO EVIDENCE OF CYBER ATTACK
“Our preliminary work traced the failure to a corrupted database file. There is no evidence of a cyber attack”, the FAA reported in a note, thus confirming what has already been anticipated by the Secretary of Transport, Pete Buttigieg. "We are working diligently to further isolate the cause of the problem and to take the necessary steps to avoid a recurrence of what happened," the agency's statement added.
THE LOCATION OF THE WHITE HOUSE
The safety of US citizens is the federal government's top priority. This was stated by White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre during a press briefing, commenting on the malfunctions that this morning led the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to temporarily suspend all departures and flights over the territory national.
“President Biden was updated on the situation by the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, and at present there is no evidence that demonstrates a hacker attack against computer systems: the FAA is continuing to investigate to trace the causes of the accident, and to identify steps that need to be taken to ensure nothing like this happens in the future,” the White House spokeswoman added.
COMMENTS
Finally, cybersecurity experts said a bad software update was the most likely cause, reports NBC News .
"Today's catastrophic FAA system failure is a clear sign that America's transportation network is in dire need of significant upgrades," said Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of the US Travel Association. “Americans deserve an end-to-end travel experience that is seamless and safe. And our nation's economy depends on world-class air travel."
So Freeman and the USTA have called on lawmakers to modernize air travel infrastructure to make sure it can "meet demand safely and efficiently," Axios reports.
IT SECURITY EXPERT: AIRPORT TILT ALSO POSSIBLE IN ITALY
“What happened in the US can also happen in Italy. The security of airports and of our systems that regulate air traffic can be improved". This is the opinion of the president and CEO of Itway, a computer security company, Giovanni Andrea Farina, on the blocking of air traffic in the United States. “Biden immediately reassured, excluding a cyberattack”, he recalled in an interview with QN , “as a technician I allow myself to have more than one doubt. In specialist chats and insiders, the truth will come out in a few days. After all, Farina observes, already in October Killnet had launched an attack against the sites of 14 of the busiest US airports which "went out of order".
This time "something definitely went wrong", underlines the expert, "if it hadn't been a cyberattack, paradoxically, it would be even worse news: it means that the software was built badly". Farina does not exclude the intervention of a foreign power ("the friction between the United States and Russia immediately comes to mind. Killnet is considered close to the Kremlin") but in any case the fact that "a recovery system has not been put into operation is really worrying." “100% safety does not exist”, he observes, in Italy “the level can certainly be improved. The European Flight Safety Agency has verified that around a thousand cyberattacks are launched on aviation systems every month”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/blocco-voli-usa/ on Thu, 12 Jan 2023 10:40:59 +0000.