DOGE to Make Rapid Safety Upgrades to Nation’s Air Traffic Control System
Move follows tragic passenger plane – helicopter collision in DC and temporary outage of its Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) systems this weekend.
During the news blitz of last weekend, what may have gone unnoticed is the fact that The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) experienced a temporary outage of its Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system on Saturday.
The NOTAM system is a critical aviation warning system that alerts pilots to potential hazards along flight routes, such as closed runways, equipment outages, and other safety-related information. The FAA quickly activated a backup system during the outage, which lasted several hours.
It was not the first time the system failed, either.
This is not the first time the NOTAM system has experienced an outage. The system also went down in January 2023 – which resulted in the first nationwide ground stop since Sept. 11, 2001, and caused the delay and cancelation of thousands of flights. The outage was quickly attributed to a contractor who unintentionally deleted files.
Since the first NOTAM system failure, the FAA has taken critical steps to mitigate flight disruptions stemming from agency database malfunctions.
The former Transportation Sectary took no steps beyond scolding the airlines to resolve the problem.
Now Elon Musk and the new Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy have announced that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system1. This initiative comes in the wake of recent aviation incidents, including a deadly crash between a passenger plane and a Black Hawk helicopter near Washington DC that claimed the lives of 67 people.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday said the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will make “rapid safety upgrades” to the air traffic control systems with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
“With the support of President @realDonaldTrump, the @DOGE team will aim to make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system,” Musk wrote Wednesday on the social platform X, which he own.
With the support of President @realDonaldTrump, the @DOGE team will aim to make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system.
Just a few days ago, the FAA’s primary aircraft safety notification system failed for several hours!https://t.co/WHwNNBN0Zd https://t.co/fwOJ9BUBX5
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2025
As of yet, there are no firm reports on plans or the focus of the fixes.
It is unclear what the group’s plans are for improving the nation’s aviation infrastructure and safety system.
Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, confirmed on the social media platform X that he had spoken to the Department of Government Efficiency team about this new effort but didn’t provide any insights into the discussion.
Neither the White House nor the Transportation Department immediately responded to a request for comment.
Given that a Japan Airlines flight hit the tail of a parked Delta plane at Seattle SeaTac Airport today, the deep dive into the air traffic control system is timely.
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) announced on social media Wednesday that Port of Seattle Fire, police and SEA operations responded to an incident just after 10:15 a.m. local time, on a ramp on a taxi line between S Concourse and the south airport maintenance hangars.
The incident involved a taxing Japan Airlines aircraft “that appears to have struck” the tail of a parked Delta Air Lines aircraft, according to a statement from the airport, posted to X.
The airport worked with both airlines to safely deplane passengers and bring them to the terminal, according to officials.
“All passengers from [the] incident involving Japan Airlines flight 68 & Delta Air Lines flight 1921 have been deplaned [with] no reported injuries,” the airport wrote in another statement. “Airlines are working to accommodate passengers as needed. Airport response crews will be moving the aircraft off of the ramp taxiway.”
🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Passenger Captures Japan Airlines Collision with Delta Jet at SeaTac
A passenger recorded the moment of impact as a Japan Airlines plane hit a stationary Delta jet while taxiing at Seattle-Tacoma Airport. He started filming after noticing the aircraft wouldn’t… pic.twitter.com/F6ZATofZQx
— WPSdefender (@wpsdefender11) February 5, 2025
To conclude this piece, I give you Duff’s burn of Hilary Clinton.
Madam Secretary, with all due respect, “experienced” Washington bureaucrats are the reason our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling. You need to sit this one out. pic.twitter.com/6IhE5xLxV8
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) February 5, 2025
And by “all do respect”, likely he means with none at all. Especially after the connections to the Clintons and USAID funding is revealed.
Jaw drop: Chelsea Clinton’s org got $85M in USAID money. How is that even possible?
USAID , Clinton Foundation, oh boy the DOGE people are finding all the goodies lurking in the SwampChelsea Clinton raking in $84 Million!
Now you see why democrats don’t want @elonmusk to… pic.twitter.com/QsDJOQTYiB
— Ape𝕏 (@CubanOnlyTrump) February 6, 2025
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Comments
Improving safety “immediately” is idiocy. You analyze the hell out of accidents, figure out what went wrong, and work to prevent that by procedure changes, one by one.
There are hundreds of NTSB recommendations that the FAA has not acted on from past accidents but I don’t know of any responsible for repeated accidents.
NOTAMS are a very clunky system to tell you about stuff along your planned route, if you even bother looking it up.
Better would be a reverse system that takes your route and spits out anything relevant. All that does is reduce the odds of missing something, though.
“Improving safety “immediately” is idiocy.”
So is landing a rocket booster on its tail. On a barge. In the middle of the ocean.
It can’t be done unless you don’t know it can’t be done.
This would have been an epic burn of HRC.
“Madame Secretary, They can land a rocket booster on it’s tail or on a barge in the middle of the ocean. You are the one without relevance.”
Yes, just like bumble bees should not be able to fly with the wings they have. It seems no one bothered to tell them. Yet, here they go! Flying everywhere!
“NOTAMS are a very clunky system to tell you about stuff along your planned route, if you even bother looking it up.”–rhhardin
With “all due respect”, you do not appear to know much about commercial aviation.
Commercial-Instrument pilot here and “bothering to look up” Notams is not a factor. Notams are an element of every standard pre-flight weather briefing that airline pilots are rquired to get before take off. And off course, that briefing is route-based to include all relevant information along the pilot’s route of flight.
Well, monkey boy got half that right! NOTAMS is clunky. Clunky as fuck but as it’s a purely text based service (or was when I was flying) it should actually be pretty easy upgraded on to a more robust platform.
Except it is not idiocy. There have been safety proposals that have been delayed for decades because of government bureaucracy and there have been technology improvements over the decades as well. Instituting these improvements immediately would make things safer immediately and it does not preclude further safety improvements later. In fact one major way improvements are blocked is by arguing better improvements could come later if we wait ” just a little bit longer” which leads to never making improvements. The best method is to continually ( immediately) make improvements over time instead of constant delays.
Implementing new technology takes trial and error, lots of testing, parallel operation before turning off the mold system etc. Not fast at all.
The point is, it’s even slower if you never start it.
“The best method is to continually ( immediately) make improvements over time instead of constant delays.”
I’m not sure continual improvements is the best plan. Because of two definitions:
The process of removing bugs from code is called “debugging”.
The process of inserting bugs into code is called “programming”.
Thank God
Note the despicable, vile and opportunistic crone Clinton, absurdly blaming the two recent plane crashes on the Trump Administration.
This miserable and resentful harridan never misses an opportunity to insert herself into the spotlight, in the most narcissistic, self-aggrandizing and dishonest manner possible.
It’s all she’s got
Here’s where Musk’s zoomers get a crash course on all government-procured IT systems needing to be vetted for not endangering the snail darter, polluting the air and water, and being preprogrammed with the correct pronouns (plus ADA, Jovial, Pascal, or whatever antique language the procurer encrusted as a “must have” back in 1978) before they can even be included in the “GSA Schedule” catalog (i.e., be even CONSIDERED for purchasing) for some indeterminate upcoming year.
The ATC was supposed to be updated in 2015
https://techcrunch.com/2015/08/16/air-traffic-control-is-getting-a-much-needed-upgrade/
However, that all crumbled in 2016:
“On May 13, NATCA President Paul Rinaldi took part in a Bipartisan Policy Center panel, entitled “Modernizing Our Air Traffic Control System: What’s the Holdup?” As Congress debates reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the issue of whether and how to reform our air traffic control system is at an impasse. The U.S. air traffic control system still runs on decades-old technology, yet efforts to update it have limped forward.
https://www.natca.org/2016/05/13/may-13-2016-rinaldi-speaks-on-modernization-of-the-air-traffic-control-system/
In 2023
“Since 2018, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) made mixed progress meeting milestones in its ongoing effort to modernize air traffic management, known as the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). This mixed progress, across four critical program areas, has slowed FAA’s NextGen efforts to improve the safety and efficiency of air travel and address growing congestion in the national airspace. For example, FAA beat its milestone for deploying more reliable digital communication services at air traffic control towers. However, it did not deploy initial services to all 20 facilities serving en route flights by its September 2021 milestone
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105254
There was an exchange on X that went something like this:
Leftist: Musk is an unelected fascist. What does he know about aviation safety?
Reply: Dude just caught a rocket.
The left is screeching as if Dorothy just threw a bucket of water on them.
And it’s wonderful to behold.
While we’re at it, can we restore the original meaning of NOTAM, “Notice to Airmen”? “Air Missions” was part of the Biden FAA’s DEI initiative because they thought we didn’t have enough female pilots due to “non-inclusive” language.
The FAA has been using outdated computers and code for over 60 years. Some of the control centers use vacuum tube computers for fu&$s sake. Billions have been wasted on unimplemented fixes for the last 45 years. I’ll bet Elon mad his band of coders can get it fixed in less than 6 months.
Six months? Not a chance. This is mission-critical SOFTWARE we are talking about. It has to work rain or shine, thunderstorms and snow, through idiots unplugging things they should not touch, etc… The first step (which nobody here has mentioned yet, so I might as well) is to look at the software and hardware systems in use over the rest of the world. We’re not an island after all. It is a thousand times easer to take something that works and make it cover more area than to create it from scratch. Even if money is put behind this, as well as competent management, to do it right will take six years to START, and a constant flow of cash to maintain and update the system over the next few decades. That’s the hardest part. Congress tends to throw a giant chunk of money at a problem, declare it fixed, and leave.
Technically, this is correct. Politically, you have to worry about how foreign origin and foreign dependency could game it. Remember, this is how we got Dominion, TikTok. and Big Chinese Pharma.
Well- as someone who is dealing with some hardened Linux systems with safeguards put in place by smart engineers who are long gone…. good luck boys. Get out the pocket book and don’t do it on the cheap.
Microsoft Windows has the same problem.
Sounds like a good use for the USAID slush fund.
I am reminded of one of my late husband’s favorite humor monologues.
David Gunson’s “What Goes Up Might Come Down.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KbUNzi58wM
Don’t worry, Hills. They are not going to use Bleach Bit on the system.
NOTAM IS ERROR, MUST STERILIZE!!!!
-Nomad 1967
Remeber the runup to Y2K? Back when i was flying every day as a CFI, my nextdoor neighbor was an Air traffic controller at the local regional FAA Center. We were having conversation about the possibility of the ATC system crashing with Y2K…. His analysis was along the lines of “the system is too old to care”….. i think it is still the same system