The FAA announced yesterday it is “accelerating the modernization” of its Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) service. The new service is set to go into operation this year. According to the agency, it used “a streamlined, innovative vendor challenge to cut through red tape to get this critical work done as fast as possible.”
Looks like Canada’s got our six by the FAA handing the NOTAM system rebuild to CGI Federal. A Virginia based entity, but they’re owned by a Canadian outfit out of Montreal.
Kind of ironic, considering all the cross border griping lately. But maybe the FAA just figured it was time to get it done right.
Is this diplomacy? Or just a rare moment of government using common sense? Either way, and soon, if your next wheels up goes smooth, you might owe a nod north of the border.
A fast roll out of a new system critical to flight safety – what could possibly go wrong? It will probably work well after pilots test the system in enough ways to find the bugs and then to prove none remain.
Somehow a slower and more careful rollout appeals to me, even if the current thoroughly debugged NOTAM system is not perfectly reliable, and the slower rollout is worse political theater.
You are correct, Steve. Rushing a new NOTAM system is a good way to find bugs the hard way. And that is before you factor in the learning curve for users here and abroad.
The more I look into it, the more complicated it gets. The FAA says it will be fully rolled out by September, but that sounds optimistic. CGI is rebuilding the core, routing, filtering, and what shows up in front of pilots, controllers, ground personnel, and dispatchers.
And here is the real concern. The learning curve does not end at rollout. The system has to work not just for pilots, but for everyone across the chain—controllers, dispatchers, flight schools, FBOs, app developers, military ops, and international partners like ICAO and NAV CANADA. From student pilots to airline dispatch, tower to tablet, this thing touches a lot of hands. That’s why a rushed rollout is risky. Everyone depends on NOTAMs being accurate, visible, and usable.
We might not see real reliability until 2027. The current system may be clunky, but we know its flaws. I will take clutter I understand over a clean screen that misses what matters. Thanks for the heads-up.
Streamlining the government procurement system is a good thing. It’s gotten mired in so many laws and regulations, with so many hands touching it, being highly affected by the funding process, that’s it takes at upwards of a year to award a contract and begin the work. I had to deal with the federal procurement system for 23 years.
Accelerating custom software development is not usually a good thing. It takes a while to get all the stakeholders to agree on requirements before a contractor can create an architecture and design. If you rush it using some technique like rapid prototyping, you are bound to miss key requirements and end up having to re-design and rebuild the system later at greater expense and delay. I led large-scale government software development contracts on the government side and the private industry side for 20 years and I saw this happen over and over again.
Getting the requirements right is a long, painful, human resource intensive problem that will take at least a year if things go right. The employees who know the systems well enough to formulate the requirements are usually unavailable due to being fully occupied by their normal duties. They also don’t want to be sidelined for long periods out of their normal duties since they will lose promotion opportunities. That results in the operating functions providing less critical, less knowledgeable employees for the requirements development process. You can probably guess how that ends up.
Getting the requirements right also means resolving conflicts in requirements and differing requirement priorities between the multitude of stakeholders. Agency leadership seldom gets involved in this level of detail but someone has to be the tie-breaker. Unfortunately, most federal agency leaders are either political appointees without a clue about the details or uninterested in getting their hands dirty. So they rely on their staffs to make the technical recommendations. That works to some extent within an agency but when separate agencies disagree, someone higher up has to do the job. The Peter Principle is alive and well in that situation. The higher up you go, the less competence.
It sounds good to say that a streamlined procurement process and new contractor will save the day but in my experience the schedule and cost of a large software development project will all be blown by a lot if the requirements (scope) aren’t correct.
“The employees who know the systems well enough to formulate the requirements are usually unavailable due to being fully occupied by their normal duties. They also don’t want to be sidelined for long periods out of their normal duties since they will lose promotion opportunities.”
No doubt, you are correct, Andrew. The problem as I see it, is they have all been fired. The FAA had no one left so they had to go outside to get this job done. The chickens are coming home to roost…
As you sit back and look at that page of NOTAMs, it immediately says not user friendly. The tight printing which looks like it’s done on a late '60s ribbon printer, is horrible in this day and age. That format is one of the reasons that many pilots skip NOTAMs before flight. Canada, anybody, you can come up with a more friendly user approach to reading this than what we have and have had for years and years. I’ll be waiting. Thanks.
Yes! This is another one of those statements from People In Power that have no real clue what they are doing, but can read a press release like an Oscar winning actor.
I will agree with Andrew, as a software developer/Analyst for 45+ years, I’ve seen much smaller system conversions/rewrites take over a year and that was basic eComm/ERP connections. DOGE(sh#t) says they will rewrite the SSA code in a few months or the IRS code inside a year and yet, will they find enough COBOL programmers to help analyze the code (no, they were fired of retired a long time ago) and no programmer under 40 evens knows COBOL. I’m guessing but the NOTAMS system is either written in ADA or COBOL so good luck there.
We have People in Power that have no real clue what they are doing, Duffy’s a prime example, yet some folks rally round and support these duds. Anyone here, would you feel good if you found out the person flying your commercial airplane got an Emmy for playing the role of a pilot, but never touch a control in his/her life? If so, I’ll watch y’all take off from the ground. Duffy has zero experience in aviation or in computer systems, but sure, he’s right on top of this project (/s).
If Duffy (et al) were serious at all about improving the system then he should understand and express this will take years, it will cost A Lot, and may not be completed before the next administration is in place. My own take is that this is a grift contract. CGI Federal will make good $$$ on the contract, invoice it as cost plus, and sadly, “gosh we ran into issues, NOTAMS is hard” not ever finish it.
I think the headline should be Major NOTAM Upgrade Predicted This Year.
Expected? Nope.
What exactly is “upgraded” about NOTAMs with this change? If it’s an infrastructure change intended to prevent outages, then that’s a positive, but it does not get at the core problem with NOTAMs, which is that they’re a garbage bin of useless, irrelevant garbage. The other day, I was briefing for a flight, and one of the NOTAMs that came up was for a light that was out of service on a tower 128’ AGL TEN MILES from the airport. Come on. Meanwhile, I’ve seen “RUNWAY CLOSED” on the second page of notices.
The focus should be on clarity (get rid of the pay-by-the-letter abbreviations) and relevance.
Yup. I’ve waded through so many notams for IAPs to private helipads on top of hospitals. Foreflight and the FAA know that I am not so rated or equipped. And don’t start me on the radio altimeter notams. Why can’t Foreflight put a “snooze” button on certain kinds of notams so that I can effortlessly ignore them for some amount of time, possibly longer?
Why not? I want to know. Anyone know?
That should be a feature request, Richard.
Seems like it would be a good one for you to do. Foreflight does implement many requests, from time to time.
Better than the last one which was a name change! (i.e. the Notice to Air Missions) 