President Joe Biden recently signed the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) Improvement Act into law.
The legislation improves the NOTAM system pilots use for safety alerts during flights by establishing a Federal Aviation Administration taskforce to determine what improvements should be made to the system.
The system alerts pilots of potential hazards along a flight route or at a location that could affect the safety of the flight.
“This bill is critical to improving the safety of our skies for pilots and passengers by bringing experts from across the air travel industry together to improve the NOTAM system,” U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN), who introduced the bill, said. “We must avoid another system crash like the one in January that grounded all domestic air traffic for the first time since 9/11, and this bill is a crucial first step.”
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced the U.S. Senate version of the bill.
“By upgrading and modernizing the FAA’s NOTAM system, this new law will improve aviation safety and prevent system outages from derailing travel,” Klobuchar said. “Travelers in the United States deserve safe and dependable air travel service, not nationwide ground stops caused by system failures like we saw earlier this year.”