Canada’s Bizarre NOTAM Flight Issues…

Canada’s Bizarre NOTAM Flight Issues…

21

I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s all very strange…

Canada reports NOTAM system problems

Late Tuesday night, we saw a major failure with the United States Federal Aviation Administration’s systems, impacting thousands of flights. Specifically, the FAA experienced an outage related to the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system. This is a vital program that relays important safety related messages to pilots, and it suddenly stopped working.

Shortly after 12PM ET today, NAV Canada, which is Canada’s air navigation service provider, also reported issues. Specifically, NAV Canada stated that the NOTAM entry system was experiencing an outage that was impacting newly issued NOTAMs, and work was being done to restore the functionality.

Fortunately for Canada, this didn’t impact flight operations, so there were no significant operational issues. In Canada’s case, this was resolved within two hours, though NAV Canada indicated that it would continue to investigate the cause of this incident.

US & Canada issues apparently aren’t linked?!

This is where it gets strange. We still don’t know what caused NOTAM issues in the United States, though initial reports indicated there was no sign of this being a hack or cyber attack.

With something similar happening in Canada just hours later, you’d think that the problems are linked. However, that’s allegedly not the case. NAV CANADA believes that its outage is unrelated to the FAA outage experienced earlier.

This is obviously way beyond my pay grade (I don’t understand the backend technology of NOTAMs), but huh?! This is really strange…

Bottom line

The United States had an air traffic meltdown in the past 24 hours stemming from issues with its NOTAM system, which is essential for communicating safety advisories to pilots. The issue has been resolved, though hours later Canada experienced a similar problem, which it claims is unrelated to the failure in the United States.

One has to wonder what on earth is going on here.

What’s your take on these two similar but unrelated NOTAM issues?

Conversations (21)
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  1. Kill Shot Guest

    Most likely answer is an early warning satellite picked up a Russian sub surfacing and opening up its missiles tubes or that fancy new Russian cruiser with the hypersonic missiles test fired something and everyone panicked.

  2. Ross Guest

    What is the typical daily and weekly volume of NOTAMs? How many of them are weather-related? Has the volume increased significantly as weather events have increased?
    Occam's Razor would suggest we ask whether the FAA is trying to pour 20 ounces into a 16-ounce bottle, and Canada is trying to pour 600ml into a 500ml flask.

  3. Jordan Diamond

    It's not like you have not all been warned. Repeatedly!!

    Those of us who have been warning or dropping hints are not confused by any of this or similar things. We have the luxury of not being confused, thinking it's strange, not making sense, etc.

    You all are responding in the micro...

    Sorry, yes, isn't it odd that both the USA and Canada had an identical system issue :-)

    1. Jayceegee Member

      How delightfully vague.

  4. FlyerDon Member

    Republicans have only been the majority party in the House for a week and look what has happened.

  5. loungeguy Guest

    It's all tied to some pilot programmers who didn't like the very woke conversion of "Notices To Airmen" to "Notices To Air Missions" in December 2021.

    Yes, that's a joke.

  6. David Guest

    There is another "coincidence" Both have incompetent leaders (Biden and Trudeau). And don't forget the most incompetent, unqualified Secretary of Transportation in the history of the USA (Mayor Pete).

    1. ORD_Is_My_Second_Home Diamond

      Yeah, and Trump, Chao, and Stephen Harper would have been so much better, wouldn't it?

    2. ORD_Is_My_Second_Home Diamond

      Actually, no, they wouldn't be. Unless you're one of those conservative freaks that keep telling women what they can do with their bodies and claiming that drag queens are pedophiles.

    3. Dave Guest

      Right. The US has been led by Biden and Buttigieg has been the head of DOT since 2021 and Canada has been led by Trudeau since 2015, but it took the former 2 years and the latter 7-8 years to cause something bad to happen with a software system that none of them actually uses. Makes perfect sense. God these comments are a total open sewer.

  7. Jerry Diamond

    Air Canada doesn't need any help messing up their flight operations; they're perfectly capable of doing it on their own, so the Russian hackers decided their efforts were best directed elsewhere.

  8. Jance Guest

    There are no "coincidences." There are two rational root causes:

    1. There is some common technology/resource that both systems rely on (eg AWS); or
    2. Coordinated, deliberate attacks from a single origin or loosely allied parties acting in concert (we all know the usual suspects: Russia, North Korea, Iran; right-wing domestic terrorists - they have been attacking local power utilities around the country in recent months, but those goons don't appear to be technically...

    There are no "coincidences." There are two rational root causes:

    1. There is some common technology/resource that both systems rely on (eg AWS); or
    2. Coordinated, deliberate attacks from a single origin or loosely allied parties acting in concert (we all know the usual suspects: Russia, North Korea, Iran; right-wing domestic terrorists - they have been attacking local power utilities around the country in recent months, but those goons don't appear to be technically sophisticated enough to pull this off).

    My money is on some common technology or asset they both use; could be intentional or just incompetence.

    1. Todd Diamond

      The smart money is always on incompetence and poor planning.

    2. Never In Doubt Guest

      Exactly.

      Hanlon's razor is an adage or rule of thumb that states "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

    3. david Guest

      Tim Dunn says it was not Delta's fault.

    4. Todd Guest

      The FAA reason was incompetence:

      https://abcnews.go.com/US/faa-monitoring-systems-high-level-after-notam-failure/story?id=96391067

    5. BBK Diamond

      'Russia, NK, Iran..' ant then 'right wing'.. In spanish we say something along the lines of 'what an ideological soup' LOL

    6. Jayceegee Member

      it isn't that there are "no coincidences", it's that coincidences are rare and therefore improbable. Something with a 1% probability of occurring still occurs 1/100 times.

  9. Steve Diamond

    Could see Canada running some checks and tests today to ensure they dont have an outage or an attack and it caused this issue. Could also see them both being linked.

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Dave Guest

Right. The US has been led by Biden and Buttigieg has been the head of DOT since 2021 and Canada has been led by Trudeau since 2015, but it took the former 2 years and the latter 7-8 years to cause something bad to happen with a software system that none of them actually uses. Makes perfect sense. God these comments are a total open sewer.

4
ORD_Is_My_Second_Home Diamond

Actually, no, they wouldn't be. Unless you're one of those conservative freaks that keep telling women what they can do with their bodies and claiming that drag queens are pedophiles.

3
ORD_Is_My_Second_Home Diamond

Yeah, and Trump, Chao, and Stephen Harper would have been so much better, wouldn't it?

3
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