GBTA Calls for “Top-to-Bottom Review” of Weekend’s Air Travel Disruption

Earlier this week, GBTA issued a call for a top-to-bottom review of the air travel disruption that caused cancellations and delays of flights across the nation. We issued the following statement:

Over the weekend, an air traffic disruption caused by a ‘technical glitch’ resulted in more than 3,400 delays and 640 cancellations of flights across the nation. This is an unacceptable outcome, which caused considerable hardship to tens of thousands of travelers across the nation.

In the wake of this disruption, there should be a top-to-bottom review of how technical upgrades are implemented, including a close examination of the long-term planning process. A situation like this should never happen again.

Just as important, this outage should serve as a wakeup call to Congress on Reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which expires on September 30th.

The traveling public needs a reliable air travel system. We cannot afford to go through a repeat of the last reauthorization process, which took over 20 short-term extensions and four years.

When it comes to air travel, long term planning is dependent on long term funding. This is something desperately missing and is hindering the upgrade of the nation’s air traffic control.