In announcing their request to the IG, the Representatives noted that the system experiencing the glitch is owned and operated by a private contractor, and asked for a report within 60 days on the "causes of today’s incident, the FAA’s ability to correct it and prevent future outages, and the agency’s effectiveness at overseeing the program."
They said the agency’s proposed NextGen air traffic control system would have similar contractor-run components.
"Given the recent outage and its cascading effects, we request that your office undertake a 60-day study to examine the causes of the problem and whether FAA’s corrective action plan will prevent future problems," they wrote.
They also asked for an examination of the FAA’s ability to conduct oversight of FTI, and the implications for overseeing other components that will be part of NextGen, such as the Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast satellite-based surveillance system.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association lambasted the FAA for the outage and said it was evidence of a flawed approach and called for more "redundancy."
It claimed the incident supports its effort to block FAA plans to close some air traffic facilities and fold operations into a smaller number of facilities.
"A lack of adequate back-up systems leaves the nation’s traffic control system in an unacceptably risky position where a regional or, in Thursday’s case, nationwide shutdown could happen at any time without warning due to technological failure or the lack of adequate resources to locate and fix problems quickly," the union said.
