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FAA Outage: System Downtime Puts an Entire Industry on Hold

Pete Goldin
Editor and Publisher
APMdigest

"The US aviation sector was struggling to return to normal following a nationwide ground stop imposed by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) early Wednesday over a computer issue that forced a 90-minute halt to all US departing flights," Reuters reported on January 11.


The breakdown showed how much American air travel depends on the computer system that generates alerts called NOTAMs — or Notice to Air Missions, Associated Press reported. The system broke down late Tuesday and was not fixed until midmorning Wednesday. The FAA took the rare step of preventing any planes from taking off for a time, and the cascading chaos led to more than 1,300 flight cancellations and 9,000 delays by early evening on the East Coast, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

The FAA said a corrupted file affected both the primary and backup systems.

Speaking of tech problems impacting the aviation industry, this happened only a couple weeks after Southwest Airlines experienced a meltdown during the holidays. National Public Radion reported: "By all accounts Southwest was using badly outdated computer systems to manage that complicated system."

But from the IT Ops perspective, the real take away from this news is not specifically about the FAA or the airline industry. Every organization faces this same concern every day — keeping systems updated and up and running. The alternative can be disastrous.

Many, if not most, companies in the US could not take a hit of this caliber and still maintain business as usual

"Today's FAA outage underscores the great need for modernized infrastructure, especially within organizations that operate on antiquated systems," said Fred Koopmans, BigPanda CPO. "The impact to travelers is obvious in this case, but it's imperative to also consider the internal mechanics the FAA will now have to address to recover from this."

Koopmans continued, "The average cost of a significant IT outage, according to 2022 research, is $6,912/minute or $414,720/hour – that's a $7.4M price tag for the FAA based on reports that issues arose at 3pm ET on Tuesday. Many, if not most, companies in the US could not take a hit of this caliber and still maintain business as usual."

"The outdated SaaS systems that many airlines rely upon are difficult to operate and run using older coding languages that few people still know how to use efficiently," explained Peter Pezaris, SVP of Strategy & User Experience at New Relic. "This means that when issues occur, they can be difficult to locate and fix — especially in a timely manner. Beyond that, they are also susceptible to cascading events, when a system fails and goes on to cause a ripple effect. As companies scale and the average tech stack becomes more complex, the risk of outages only rises. Not only is the IT team trying to get the system back up and running, but they are also fielding what can be a massive influx of requests ranging from internal stakeholders up to the Board level or customer complaints."

"Minimizing the time to understand the issue is critical," Pezaris added. "What makes this difficult is that most companies have observability data scattered everywhere. Observability unifies an organization's data and can provide airlines with a 360-degree view of their entire IT stacks, allowing engineers to detect and resolve issues before they impact flights."

Recently published data from New Relic's 2022 Observability Forecast shows that 45% of respondents experience an outage with a high business impact once per week or more — and 29% of those outages take an hour or more to resolve.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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FAA Outage: System Downtime Puts an Entire Industry on Hold

Pete Goldin
Editor and Publisher
APMdigest

"The US aviation sector was struggling to return to normal following a nationwide ground stop imposed by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) early Wednesday over a computer issue that forced a 90-minute halt to all US departing flights," Reuters reported on January 11.


The breakdown showed how much American air travel depends on the computer system that generates alerts called NOTAMs — or Notice to Air Missions, Associated Press reported. The system broke down late Tuesday and was not fixed until midmorning Wednesday. The FAA took the rare step of preventing any planes from taking off for a time, and the cascading chaos led to more than 1,300 flight cancellations and 9,000 delays by early evening on the East Coast, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

The FAA said a corrupted file affected both the primary and backup systems.

Speaking of tech problems impacting the aviation industry, this happened only a couple weeks after Southwest Airlines experienced a meltdown during the holidays. National Public Radion reported: "By all accounts Southwest was using badly outdated computer systems to manage that complicated system."

But from the IT Ops perspective, the real take away from this news is not specifically about the FAA or the airline industry. Every organization faces this same concern every day — keeping systems updated and up and running. The alternative can be disastrous.

Many, if not most, companies in the US could not take a hit of this caliber and still maintain business as usual

"Today's FAA outage underscores the great need for modernized infrastructure, especially within organizations that operate on antiquated systems," said Fred Koopmans, BigPanda CPO. "The impact to travelers is obvious in this case, but it's imperative to also consider the internal mechanics the FAA will now have to address to recover from this."

Koopmans continued, "The average cost of a significant IT outage, according to 2022 research, is $6,912/minute or $414,720/hour – that's a $7.4M price tag for the FAA based on reports that issues arose at 3pm ET on Tuesday. Many, if not most, companies in the US could not take a hit of this caliber and still maintain business as usual."

"The outdated SaaS systems that many airlines rely upon are difficult to operate and run using older coding languages that few people still know how to use efficiently," explained Peter Pezaris, SVP of Strategy & User Experience at New Relic. "This means that when issues occur, they can be difficult to locate and fix — especially in a timely manner. Beyond that, they are also susceptible to cascading events, when a system fails and goes on to cause a ripple effect. As companies scale and the average tech stack becomes more complex, the risk of outages only rises. Not only is the IT team trying to get the system back up and running, but they are also fielding what can be a massive influx of requests ranging from internal stakeholders up to the Board level or customer complaints."

"Minimizing the time to understand the issue is critical," Pezaris added. "What makes this difficult is that most companies have observability data scattered everywhere. Observability unifies an organization's data and can provide airlines with a 360-degree view of their entire IT stacks, allowing engineers to detect and resolve issues before they impact flights."

Recently published data from New Relic's 2022 Observability Forecast shows that 45% of respondents experience an outage with a high business impact once per week or more — and 29% of those outages take an hour or more to resolve.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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