On an otherwise ordinary Wednesday in January, the skies above the United States became eerily quiet. Between 7:15 and 9:07 a.m on January 11th, planes stopped taking off from most US runways after a major computer outage prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue its first nationwide ground stop since Sept. 11, 2001.  

The inconvenience to travelers was, unsurprisingly, far-reaching. By day’s end, US-based airlines canceled more than 1,300 flights, while more than half of the day’s flights were delayed, according to data from flight-tracking site FlightAware.

For travelers, the disruption was salt in the proverbial wound. After all, the outage came just weeks after a Southwest Airlines operational meltdown saw some 16,500 flights scrapped over the holidays — a failure that itself followed mass cancellations and delays that plagued numerous airlines last summer.

And let’s not forget the two high-profile cases of planes nearly colliding on US runways in recent weeks in New York and Texas — as well as the United Airlines plane that came within 800 feet of hitting the Pacific Ocean after takeoff from Hawaii in December.

The spate of headaches and recent close calls has drawn scrutiny for the FAA — not to mention political backlash for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whose office ultimately oversees that agency.

It also underscores the glaring vacancy at the FAA’s helm: More than seven months after being picked by President Biden as FAA administrator, Phil Washington has yet to garner a Senate vote following concerns over his modest aviation industry experience as well as his role in a corruption investigation in California.

Coinciding with all of this, lawmakers have begun conducting meetings – often contentious – to chart the FAA’s course for the coming years. On Feb. 7, for instance, a hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee featured Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) making a blunt call to action: “Right now, the alarm bells should be going off across the aviation industry,” Graves said. “The aviation system is telling us something’s wrong, and we need to listen.”

Air travel in the United States is, perhaps, safer than ever. More than 14 years have passed since the last commercial aircraft crashed on US soil, and domestic air travel fatalities have reached a historic low.

“Think about the thousands of flights a day, and there’s not a hitch. That’s pretty remarkable,” said Dan Bubb, former airline pilot and aviation expert on the faculty at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. 

It’s all the more remarkable considering the 935 million-plus passenger boardings at US commercial airports in 2019 — just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic — represented a 27% increase over 2014, according to FAA data analyzed by The Post.

But the most abrupt halt to air operations since 9/11 clearly warrants close scrutiny.

According to an FAA preliminary review, the Jan. 11 trouble stemmed from human error made by a contractor who was performing maintenance on the critical Notice to Air Missions — or “NOTAM” — system, a computer program that relays safety bulletins to pilots.

The worker, it appears, accidentally deleted a crucial file while trying to correct a glitch in NOTAM’s primary and backup synchronization systems . The blunder triggered the outage, leading acting FAA administrator Billy Nolen to ultimately ground air traffic nationwide. In the wake of the glitch, FAA leaders announced a series of steps to reduce the chances of another similar failure, including banishing the contractors involved from NOTAM system access, and requiring additional workers when maintenance takes place.

But more than a month later, many lawmakers fear the agency has done too little to address their most urgent concerns about the aging NOTAM technology itself.

It’s not the mistake behind the NOTAM system outage that worries lawmakers most. It’s the fact that a single mistake triggered such widespread consequences — a technological shortfall Senate Commerce Committee Chair, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), fears could easily happen again. 

“I want to get an answer within a week about the NOTAM system having a separate backup, a totally separate backup that could be used,” Cantwell told Nolen as he testified earlier this month at a hearing investigating the January air traffic shut-down. 

Ranking Member, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) likewise pressed the interim chief: “Can a single screw-up [still] ground air traffic nationwide?” 

“Can I sit here today and tell you there will never be another issue on the NOTAM system?” Nolen replied, “No, I cannot.”

Part of the problem — and the reason NOTAM was undergoing maintenance in the first place — is that the system needs to be modernized.

Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) and Graves referred to NOTAM as “outdated” and “antiquated” in a recent congressional hearing. Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.) called it “archaic” in an interview with the Post. 

The NOTAM upgrades are part of a larger, yearslong FAA effort to modernize the national airspace’s infrastructure to next generation — or “NextGen” — technological standards. Costing billions of dollars, the package of projects has encountered numerous delays dating back more than a decade.

The FAA reports foundational pieces of NextGen — such as tracking aircraft by satellite — are in place and have generated $8.5 billion in benefits through 2021 by reducing costs for airlines and wait times for passengers.

Updates to the legacy NOTAM system itself, though, aren’t slated to wrap up before 2025. So, while a spokesperson said the agency is “exploring ways to accelerate” those efforts, the program that failed on Jan. 11 will likely remain part of the U.S. aviation ecosystem for the next two years.

Unsatisfied with that timeline, bipartisan lawmakers in both the House and Senate recently introduced legislation calling on the FAA to establish a task force to identify necessary improvements to NOTAM.

But some fear even heightened urgency toward modernizing NOTAM is not enough.

“I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg at the FAA,” testified Sharon Pinkerton, senior vice president at the airline trade group Airlines for America, at the Senate Commerce Committee hearing this month. 

While Congress has heeded funding requests for NextGen and NOTAM, the nearly $18.5 billion the agency received in 2022 is less than the amount it received back in 2006 when adjusted for inflation.

“The FAA has probably not been given the money it needs to invest for a long time,” said airline industry analyst Henry Harteveldt, president of Atmosphere Research Group. Much of this has to do with the FAA’s unique “constant fight” for funding, Harteveldt adds, which makes long-term planning that much harder.

Every few years, the FAA goes through a budget reauthorization process on Capitol Hill, the most recent in 2018. Talks for the next reauthorization recently began, inspiring Jason Ambrosi, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, to urge Congress to allocate “stable, long-term resources” to the agency. His sentiments were echoed by Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian’s ‘call to action’ for lawmakers to “fund and properly provide the FAA the resources they need” during a January earnings call.

What Congress does with the FAA in 2023 will be closely watched throughout the aviation sector, particularly when it comes to infrastructure funding and staffing: Airlines pointed to air traffic controller shortages as a key factor in last summer’s delays and cancellations. 

Although the FAA and Buttigieg insist staffing was not a predominant factor in the January disruptions, the numbers speak for themselves. 

“In 2011, there were over 11,750 Certified Professional Controllers and additional trainees yielding over 15,000 total controllers on board at the FAA,” said Rich Santa, president of the Air Traffic Controllers Union said at an aviation industry event last summer.  “By the beginning of 2022, there were more than 1,000 fewer fully certified controllers, and 1,500 fewer total controllers on board.” 

Beyond staffing, there is another layer to the urgency around the FAA: We’re on the verge of a rapidly-changing aviation landscape, warned aviation — the interim FAA chief Nolen among them.

When Nolen spoke at an aviation industry luncheon in November, he made a striking prediction: By the time the Olympics arrive in Los Angeles in 2028, there will be strong demand for new-age aircraft like ‘air taxis’ — highly automated, electric aircraft that can take off and land vertically.  

Factor in other aircraft like drones, and Nolen argues the FAA today shoulders the burden of managing three distinct National Airspace systems: The “classic” (or, you might say, ‘old school’) system many aircraft still use; the “modern,” resulting from the agency’s digital, NextGen now-in-progress upgrades; and the “future” — think air taxis and other Jetson-esque inventions.

Does the FAA have the necessary resources to accommodate this growing complexity? When the Post asked the agency, a spokesperson merely pointed to a comment from Nolen’s November speech:

“Sustaining, implementing and planning all of it takes resources, and while the crowd is getting bigger, the loaves and fishes remain the same,” he told the audience in a clear call for more funding. 

But his remarks that day went beyond a plea for more funding.

“We need to think differently,” he said at the time. 

Indeed, across the aviation industry, experts agree the FAA must make changes to how it operates and governs the nation’s increasingly congested airspace. 

“It’s a question of what you spend your money on, how you prioritize things, and [manpower],” said Robert Mann, an industry analyst and former airline executive who spent time at American Airlines, PanAm and TWA.  

“You can’t just keep pouring concrete . . . building more runways,” he said.

In fairness to the contractor who helped trigger January’s NOTAM system failure, performing maintenance on a critical system as planes continue to fly overhead isn’t easy; Harteveldt likens it to performing heart or brain surgery on a patient without anesthesia.

For all the negative headlines, though, there are signs of progress. While the five largest U.S. airlines canceled nearly 28,000 flights in the 102 days between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day last year, those same carriers canceled less than half that many — just over 12,000 — in the 102 days that followed as airlines reduced schedules, according to FlightAware.

Meanwhile, multiple airlines and the FAA report significant progress in hiring pilots and air traffic controllers though training these employees takes time and resources. 

And, ultimately, aviation in America remains incredibly safe.

“But we do not take that for granted,” Nolen told the Senate this month. “Recent events remind us that we cannot and must not become complacent, and must continually invest in our aviation system.”

It’s why the agency will hold a recently-announced “safety summit” next month. And, more broadly, it’s why lawmakers face critical decisions about the FAA, precisely at a moment when our already busy skies will soon become far busier – and Secretary Buttigieg faces even greater scrutiny in the wake of the East Palestine train disaster. 

“The FAA . . . needs our help,” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) said at a Senate hearing this month. “But it also needs to get its act together.”

Sean Cudahy is a former aviation reporter at The Points Guy