I’m not normally a word snob. My high school English grades were nothing to brag about.
But there is something that just doesn’t sit right with me when I read the FAA statement concerning the Jan. 11, 2023, NOTAM meltdown. Specifically: “A preliminary FAA review of last week’s outage of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system determined that contract personnel unintentionally deleted files while working to correct synchronization between the live primary database and a backup database.”
I’m stuck on the word “unintentional.”
For those familiar with a modern computer, when we want to delete a file we move that file to the trash can and then command the computer to empty the trash to truly delete the file. Unless you’ve changed your computer settings, you will likely see a pop-up alert asking you to confirm you do want to delete the files. You will have to click the “Empty Trash” button in order to truly delete the files.
I’ve intentionally completed that act thousands of times. And on more than one occasion, my intentional act came back to bite me when I actually needed that deleted file.
It wasn’t unintentionally deleted, it was mistakenly deleted. In those cases, I made a mistake.
A friend of mine has a good amount of experience in the software development world and he told me that in many of the older coding languages, if you type the command to delete a file or folder of files and execute that command, there is no “Are you sure you want to do this?” pop-up window. Upon execution, that command is immediate and permanent. Those files are gone. Period.
Back when we built issues of General Aviation News with X-Acto blades, light tables, and wax, a newly hired production manager intentionally threw away a collection of classified ads we re-used until the plane was sold or the ad was canceled. We failed to communicate an unwritten Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and his assumption of what to do with the ads proved incorrect.
So, back to that word unintentional. I wonder: Did the FAA just create a new use for an old word for pilots or mechanics?
“Why did you land on this road instead of at the airport five miles away?” I imagine an FAA inspector asking a pilot. To which the pilot replies, “I ‘unintentionally’ took off with too little fuel to complete the flight as I planned. The tower controllers delayed my takeoff 15 minutes, while my engine was running, because traffic was busy. And then I had to divert 10 miles around some strong rain showers after having to climb higher than I planned. Oh, and the headwinds were stronger than forecast.”
Of course that example is absurd, but in this day and age, is it really that far-fetched?
Don’t misunderstand me. From what I’ve read on the subject, it doesn’t appear the contractor intended to take down the NOTAM system. I think a mistake was made. Simple as that. Some new reports note that procedures (checklists for us pilots) weren’t followed.
It happens. Just take a look at the NTSB accident or ASRS incident reports we publish. Mistakes happen all the time.
In my absurd example, the pilot failed to take ownership of the situation and land with the engine still running as opposed to being exhausted of fuel. In the case of the NOTAM issue it feels like the FAA is giving the contractor an easy way out. A mistake was made and a lot of people paid dearly for that mistake in the form of flight delays all over the country. I hope that contractor learned a lesson and remains on the task. Our production manager remained a loyal and hard-working employee for many years. He also never threw away re-usable photos. He learned a lesson.
I’ve been thinking about the NOTAM fiasco from the aspect of my life and my family and my business. What have I done, or not done, that will expose any of us to a risk or situation I can’t see? We have a rather lengthy list of SOPs for the various tasks it takes to get an issue of General Aviation News from an idea in our heads to your mailbox. A list to which I keep adding. We all are surrounded by things outside our vision and ability to control. But we can take action on those things within our control. That is what I hope to do each day.
Next time I command my computer to empty the trash can, I plan to pause for a moment and ask do I really want to delete these files? And when I hit the “Empty Trash” button, it will be intentional.
I’m pretty sure that if controllers had just been instructed to tell pilots about notams that affected their flight the system could have operated near normal as 99% of notams are either worthless or not needed.
It’s possible that no one, including controllers, had access to NOTAMS during that screw up. You have a good point that there are a lot of NOTAMS we get during a pre-flight brief that really don’t effect our flight, like the 300 tower lights that our out of service, or a military ALTRAV (altitude reservation) between 23,000 and 25,000′. Some years ago, the FAA said they were working to address the glut of NOTAMS, and tailor them to a specific flight. Still waiting……
I protest….every sysadmin, every person who routinely operates at the command line, is well aware of “rm”. Every person I know (including me), when we encounter a new system, the first action we take is to update the login files to ensure there’s a “do you really want to delte that file?” built into the delete command…e,g,
alias rm “rm -i”
forces the user to confirm the delete.
Why? Because every one of us has been bitten by it …..we know how dangerous it is.
I’ll take your word for it. 🙂
From one wordsmith to another: Amen! Well-stated and explained. I was blessed with an excellent public education which included Honors English. I have been a professional writer ever since. When I see misuse of the English language and grammar such as you described, it’s like fingernails on a blackboard (we had those back in the little red schoolhouse. Now they’re whiteboards). Public discourse and rhetoric have taken a nosedive (this is an airplane blog after all) for years with verb agreement problems, adverbs omitted the ‘ly’ suffix, inappropriate plurals such as ‘indexes’ instead of ‘indices’ and — worse of all — the influence of the ‘woke’ nonsense. But today’s youth all know what ‘lol’ means. And they’re our replacements on this planet. I’m glad I lived in my time. Thanks again, sir.
Regards/J
When was the last time we saw ANY official body, government or otherwise, say, “Wow, we screwed up!” Actual mistakes don’t happen at that level. Now… on our level…they are assumed, but are labeled “error”. Same thing.
bd
The greater concern is why the FAA changed the meaning of the acronym NOTAM, which has always been Notices To Airmen, with “men” of course referring to mankind, aka humanity. It is such governmental PC nonsense that causes pilots to lose all their confidence in any advice given to them by the FAA and the rest of the federal government.
Actually, Systems Admin. on most ¨big iron” main frame systems, or Unix-ish operating systems do not work in the save my fanny candy toy environments that personal computer users habituate. Thus the delete or equivalent matched wild card character string(s) quietly, instantly effect the commanded change. A typo in a command line, a changed updated .config file, a careless double keyboard click might very well result in completely hosing the system. Then too, one should not discount the possibility of a hardware level issue. I’ve seen and experienced rather more than a few “Holy Sh** Now what!!!” events, ultimately tracked back to gradually failing humble capacitors, resistors, etc.. . Of Course the FAA is engaging in diffuse CYA explanations, top brass always will!
Thanks, I was going to point this out in my own way, but you have a good intro for this:
Let me cut to the chase. This reminds me of places that have a D/R plan (Disaster Recovery) that has never been actually tested — looks great on paper or chart…. And the problem is all the backup tapes/disks are offsite where it takes hours to get them on a truck to get returned. [You just can’t make some of this stuff up.]
And… in the Good Olde DOS Daze: there was a handy and dangerous little utility named EDLIN (stood for Edit Line of code). It did exactly what you told it to do whether or not you mis-stated your intentions. There was no Undo or Ctrl-Z. As one writer put it: “You could hang yourself without a whimper.” I really screwed-up a disk file using that utility before I clearly understood the parameters. /J
“I intended to delete the file from the backup server, but unintentionally deleted it from the primary one.”
“I intended to land at Rapid City, but unintentionally landed at Ellsworth.” Also pretty easy to do, even if you’re a two-person Delta crew.
It’s not an accident report, and isn’t attempting to illuminate a probable cause and contributing factors with a bent toward prevention.