A group of six US senators is pressing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to provide information regarding the recent outages of the Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) system.
In a statement released on April 9, 2025, US Senator Amy Klobuchar, along with Senators Shelley Moore Capito, Jerry Moran, Tammy Duckworth and Representatives Pete Stauber and Mark DeSaulnier, requested that the FAA clarify the reasons behind the recent outages and provide an update about the agency’s progress toward implementing an upgraded NOTAM system.
“Pilots rely on the NOTAM system to remain aware of safety hazards on flight routes,” the lawmakers said in a letter seen by AeroTime. “This system is critical to the safety of the nearly 3 million passengers who fly over the US every day.”
The primary NOTAM system faced outages for several hours on February 1, 2025, and March 22, 2025, according to the lawmakers.
“What caused the recent NOTAM outages? What steps is the FAA taking to mitigate future outages?” the letter read.
In 2023, Senators Klobuchar, Moran, Capito, Stauber, and DeSaulnier signed the NOTAM Improvement Act to help prevent outages in the FAA system.
The act requires the FAA to establish a task force to strengthen the resiliency and cybersecurity of the NOTAM system, which alerts pilots of safety and location hazards on flight routes.
The law required the FAA to upgrade the NOTAM system and create a backup system by September 2024, according to the letter. Although the backup system was implemented in July 2024, the required upgrade of the primary system is still not completed.
In other developments related to the agency, the FAA announced that Tim Arel, the head of its Air Traffic Organization (ATO), is stepping down from his position after 40 years of service.
His early retirement is part of the second round of buyouts initiated by the US Department of Transportation (DOT) and a broader initiative by the Trump administration to reduce the federal workforce.