House Passes Bill to Study FAA Alert System Whose Outage Grounded Flights

The outage caused departures nationwide to be halted one morning this month, disrupting travel and drawing attention to the Federal Aviation Administrations outdated technology.

WASHINGTON The House passed legislation on Wednesday that would create a task force to study a Federal Aviation Administration alert system that went down this month, causing departing flights to be grounded nationwide.

The bill drew overwhelming bipartisan support, passing by a vote of 424 to 4. It faces an unclear future in the Senate, where it failed to receive a vote after previously passing the House in 2019 and again in 2021. But the system outage this month is bringing more attention to what experts say is outdated technology at the F.A.A.

Departures across the country were halted for about 90 minutes on Jan. 11 after the F.A.A.s Notice to Air Missions system went down, and thousands of flights were ultimately delayed that day. The so-called NOTAM system is used to provide information to pilots about hazards like runway closures and airspace restrictions.