The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has rolled out the first phase of a new Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) system, replacing infrastructure that dates back to the 1980s and has long been criticized by pilots for its complexity and frequent outages.
The new platform, called the NOTAM Management Service (NMS), went live on September 29, 2025, and is now distributing alerts to early adopters. US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the rollout was completed months ahead of schedule, calling it proof of the government’s commitment to modernizing the national airspace system.
“This is the promises made, promises kept administration,” Duffy said in announcing the deployment. “We are bringing our aviation system into the 21st century at lightning speed to enhance safety in our skies. The new NOTAM system is an important proof point of how we can quickly and effectively modernize our skies under the leadership of President Trump.”
Longstanding concerns
NOTAMs provide critical safety information to pilots and dispatchers, such as temporary runway closures, airspace restrictions, or obstacles near airports. More than 4 million are issued each year. For decades, however, pilots have complained that NOTAMs are difficult to decipher and cumbersome to search.
The system’s shortcomings came into sharp focus in 2010 when then-Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma landed his Cessna on a closed runway in Texas that was undergoing construction. Workers scrambled to get out of the way, and the FAA later cited Inhofe for disregarding safety information that had been published in a NOTAM. The incident underscored how critical alerts often went unnoticed in pages of dense text.
In response, Congress directed the FAA to overhaul the system in a subsequent FAA reauthorization bill, setting the stage for today’s modernization.
Failures add urgency
The push to update the technology accelerated after a string of outages in recent years. The most serious failure came in January 2023, when the legacy US NOTAM System (USNS) crashed after contractors deleted key files, leading to a nationwide ground stop that delayed more than 11,000 flights. It was the first such stoppage since the terrorist attacks of September 2001 and highlighted the fragility of the aging infrastructure.
The FAA says the new NMS is cloud-hosted, designed for resilience, and built with a modern architecture that supports near-real-time data sharing. The agency promises the system will make it easier for pilots, airlines, and air traffic controllers to share information, while also running more smoothly and reliably than the outdated systems it will replace.
“We built a brand-new NOTAM service from the ground up in record time,” said FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford. “It is resilient, user-friendly, and scalable, and will significantly improve airspace safety and efficiency.”
The FAA said the NMS will run in parallel with the legacy system for several months while testing and validation continue. By February 2026, the agency plans to retire the outdated USNS, with the final migration of more than 12,000 global users scheduled for late spring 2026. At that point, the NMS will become the single authoritative source for all safety notices.
In December 2021, the FAA officially changed the name from “Notices to Airmen” to “Notices to Air Missions” in a move by the administration of former President Joe Biden to use gender-neutral terminology. Under the Trump administration, the name has since been changed back to “Notices to Airmen.”
For many in the cockpit, what matters most is not what the system is called, but whether it works. Pilots have long argued that the old notices were cluttered with indecipherable codes and buried key safety information in walls of text. The FAA says the NMS has been built with user input in mind and will present information in a clearer and more reliable way.
