The Federal Aviation Administration said on Thursday that a preliminary review of the computer issue that caused a nationwide ground stop earlier this month was due to “deleted files.”
The FAA said the issue occurred while personnel was working to “correct synchronization between the live primary database and a backup database” and during that time the personnel had unintentionally deleted critical files.
FAA Acting Administrator Bill Nolen plans to hold a virtual meeting later this morning for lawmakers and staff who have been seeking answers and further details of what went wrong with the pilot messaging database. The issue led to the first nationwide grounding of departing flights since September 11, 2001.