US Airline Crash Caused by Human Error

A nationwide outage in the US air transport system on Wednesday was caused by human error. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), employees have changed sensitive data files where this is not strictly allowed under the rules. An anonymous source told Bloomberg News that two outside party staffers appear to have made the mistake.

According to the source, the FAA is now investigating whether the illegal changes were intentional or accidental. After the failure of the data file, a backup system was activated, but this too encountered errors in the original data record. The FAA is said to be working on improving the system now to prevent similar errors in the future.

There was a glitch in the Notice to Air Missions, or NOTAM, system for short. For example, pilots can read that there is a hurricane and which runways are closed. As a result, all domestic flights had to be grounded for about an hour and a half. That led to thousands of delays and cancellations on Wednesday. On Thursday the issues were completely resolved.