The system’s sudden outage comes just weeks after Southwest Airlines delayed or canceled thousands of flights over the Christmas holiday week due to a malfunction in its own computer. That gives Mr. Buttigieg a firm eye on a newly emboldened House GOP caucus eager to clash over the policies of the Biden administration. And since the FAA does not have a Senate-approved administrator, former Director Steve Dixon resigned in March.
Republicans have taken some steps to poke holes in former presidential candidate Buttigieg, but they haven’t had much traction.
Rep. Garrett Graves (R-Laos), who heads the House Aviation Subcommittee, said he would hold the FAA accountable. The agency has been criticized in recent years for its clumsy computer systems and other air traffic control techniques.
“Today’s failure of the FAA has wreaked havoc across the country,” he said. “Last year has made it clear that significant improvements are needed across our aviation system. We will aggressively pursue accountability and make reforms focused on improving the passenger experience.
President Joe Biden spoke with Buttigieg about the matter on Tuesday morning and said he asked the DOT to “report me directly when they find out” what caused the outage.
Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) also indicated her committee is looking for policy solutions to the vulnerabilities exposed by Wednesday’s suspension.
“As the commission prepares for the FAA’s reauthorization bill, it will investigate what caused this outage and what role redundancies might play in preventing future outages,” she said. I was. “People need a resilient air transportation system.”
Aviation industry analyst Robert Mann said in an interview that Wednesday’s disruption was “not good” for the FAA, which seeks to manage repeated airline disruptions and hold the industry accountable.
“You would expect a secure and reliable online system like this to have a fallback feature,” said Mann, who said outages like the one on Wednesday could be avoided. I’m here. He said the hardware and software the FAA relies on are “decades old” and it makes sense to upgrade, but the need to test the new system while the old system runs at the same time. I said the process is also cumbersome because of the
The suspension did not affect military aviation, as the Department of Defense uses a different system.
