Congressman Brian Higgins (NY-26) announced approval of the NOTAM Improvement Act (H.R. 346). The bipartisan legislation was considered in response to the recent outage of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system that shut down flights across the United States on January 11, 2023 and was experiencing some delays again on January 25, 2023.
Video: https://youtu.be/4gnsaMFrCMA
In remarks on the House floor supporting the bill, Congressman Higgins said in part, “On January 11th a failure of the Notice to Air Missions system grounded thousands of flights across America. This malfunction created air travel chaos for days. The system is essential to safe flight operations and needs to be reformed. The Notice to Air Missions Improvement Act takes a proactive approach to make much-needed upgrades. Many of the airline safety measures implemented over the past 15 years were born out of the lessons we learned following the crash of Flight 3407 outside of Buffalo. We must not wait for another tragedy to make the necessary steps to protect the flying public.”
The Notice to Air Missions system provides timely information related to flight operations such as runway closures, temporary flight restrictions, or airport construction. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires pilots to review NOTAMs prior to a flight departure.
The NOTAM Improvement Act requires the FAA to establish a task force to undertake an extensive review and make recommendations for improvements to the NOTAM system. Members of the task force, which would include aviation safety experts, air carriers, labor union leaders, aviation business representatives, computer and technology experts, and others, would have no more than a year to conduct an evaluation and provide recommendations. The bill also authorizes the FAA to carry out actions proposed by the task force.
Following the January 11th NOTAM system failure, Congressman Higgins and a bipartisan group of members also wrote to Transportation Secretary Buttigieg requesting answers to a series of questions related to the incident.
Higgins has a long history of pushing for flight safety measures in Congress, supporting passage of the landmark Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Act of 2010 alongside the Families of Flight 3407 and subsequently shepherding through improvements related to pilot qualifications, fatigue and training, consumer transparency, and implementation of the Pilot Records Database.
