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I used to work for the FAA as a contractor, and it's most likely a funding issue, where as the system that handles this function is outdated and badly needs to be upgraded or replaced. While there is a fee or tax on airline tickets that suppose to go towards the FAA management of the air traffic control system, and while this money does go directly to the FAA, it only covers 75% of the FAA's budget. They have to ask congress to make up the difference every year, and congress has consistently cut amount the FAA has asks for by hundreds of millions of dollars every year. (549 million in 2019) There have been some people inside the FAA trying to push to privatize the FAA, so fees can be increased so FAA can manage there finances without interference from congress. This would also protect the agency for all too common government shut downs over the next years national budget.
I got laid off in the mandatory government cuts congress mandated in 2013, known at the 2013 budget sequestration. At that time the FAA was concentrating there remaining funding on core operations, measured in the number of flights leaving an airport. The plan that that time not service or maintain equipment smaller operational areas, like small airports in Alaska for example. The was ten years ago, so I do not know the current state of the agency, I do know that congress has consistency provided less funding than the agency has asked for funding year after year.
Last edited by TechGromit; 01-11-2023 at 08:29 AM..
I used to work for the FAA as a contractor, and it's most likely a funding issue, where as the system that handles this function is outdated and badly needs to be upgraded or replaced. While there is a fee or tax on airline tickets that suppose to go towards the FAA management of the air traffic control system, the FAA does not control that money. It goes into a general government fund, where as Congress can decide to spend that money on a new bomber or some social services program, instead of supporting FAA operations. There have been some people inside the FAA trying to push to privatize the FAA, so fees collected go directly into the FAA coffers when they can manage there finances without interference from congress. This would also protect the agency for all too common government shut downs over the next years national budget.
Great explanation, thank you! Highly insightful! My concern would be, that privatization would introduce it's own issues, like siphoning off funds for higher CEO pay, or whatever. Would it really be that difficult to simply introduce a bill (and get it passed) to keep that air travel tax money where it belongs, in its own special fund not subject to raiding by Congress?
This is a national safety issue. How can Congress not see that? See, this is what happens when you have elements in Congress, and occasionally--in the President's office, that are hell-bent on slashing the federal budget every which way, to fund tax breaks for people who don't need them. Neglect in certain sectors, agencies, and departments happens, and before you know it, there's a national emergency and no way to fix it except by increasing the national debt.
I used to work for the FAA as a contractor, and it's most likely a funding issue, where as the system that handles this function is outdated and badly needs to be upgraded or replaced.
I called it, it was reported that the system in question is running 30 year old software, not scheduled to be replaced for another 6 years. And that replacement schedule is highly likely to be only that far out because of funding issues, if the FAA had a blank check to upgrade systems the system would have been upgraded years ago. The only thing to note here, the software probably wasn’t also running on 30 year old hardware, they do replace physical hardware time to time. The system I worked on when I was at the FAA (RMMS) also was old software, but the hardware was replaced at least 3 times, running on a tandem system that was 10 years old. The software was completely rewriiten and now runs on a server cluster where the database is a 5 way replication. (5 copies of the database that are continually updated for redundancy).
I called it, it was reported that the system in question is running 30 year old software, not scheduled to be replaced for another 6 years.
The reports I have seen are saying it was due to a corrupt file. Anyone doing system upgrades knows you have a back out plan should anything go wrong, where you can restore things to the previous working state. Anytime you are replacing files, you keep the old file (rename it to file.old, etc) in case you need to go back.
The reports I have seen are saying it was due to a corrupt file. Anyone doing system upgrades knows you have a back out plan should anything go wrong, where you can restore things to the previous working state. Anytime you are replacing files, you keep the old file (rename it to file.old, etc) in case you need to go back.
You ever tried restoring a several billion record MSSQL database?
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