At least now we know what was NOT a 'root cause' of the FAA's computer outage

Last last night and into this morning an FAA computer outage caused a ground stop at airports all around the country for the first time since 9/11:

Departing flights across the United States were grounded Wednesday morning after the Federal Aviation Administration said it had experienced a computer outage.

The FAA said later that it had ordered all airlines to pause domestic departures until 9 a.m. ET.

More than 4,000 flights within, to and out of the U.S. were delayed as of around 9:00 a.m. Wednesday, according to the online flight tracker FlightAware. Nearly 700 flights were listed as canceled.

The FAA said on its website that its Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system had “failed.” NOTAM contains information essential to workers involved in flight operations.

After that mess, Transportation Secretary took to Twitter and promised to investigate and find the “root causes” of the system failure (at this time the White House is saying it doesn’t look like a hack).

It remains to be seen what caused the issue, but at least now we know what won’t be among the “root causes,” and that would be a failure of the FAA to embrace gender inclusivity:

Can't believe the FAA dropped the ball on this one pic.twitter.com/oJitdNJaTZ

— Kevin McMahon (@Kevin__McMahon) January 11, 2023

About a year ago the FAA made it known that gender inclusiveness was a top priority:

The language we use in aerospace matters. We've begun to adopt gender-neutral and inclusive aviation terminology as part of our agency-wide initiative. You can watch our Inclusive Language Summit at https://t.co/6YNdyJYE4b. #equity https://t.co/clpZBYMmbS

— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 13, 2022

From General Aviation News:

Notices to Airmen (NOTAM) have a new name: Notices to Air Mission.

Effective Dec. 2, 2021, the new name is a “more applicable term” that is “inclusive of all aviators and missions.”

The name change has already been made to many FAA documents, according to agency officials.

The name change is one of many we will see as the FAA reviews its language and strives to make it more inclusive. The agency recently held on online Inclusive Language Summit that addresses some of these changes.