(New York) The computer failure that forced the US civil aviation regulator (FAA) to temporarily suspend US domestic flights on January 11 was caused by a contractor mistakenly deleting files, the FAA said Thursday.
The agency had previously blamed the failure, which caused thousands of cancellations and delays on Jan. 11, on a damaged database file.
A preliminary report showed that a contractor “unintentionally erased files while working on synchronization between the main database and the backup database”, the agency said Thursday. .
The investigation is continuing, but the agency claims to have found no evidence linking the incident to a malicious act or a cyber attack.
On the other hand, the FAA is taking measures to ensure that the information system concerned, intended to warn the crew members of an aircraft in real time of potential dangers on the ground or in the sky, is “more resilient”.
US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on January 11 that he had asked the FAA to determine the causes of the problem and to explain why the systems supposed to take over in the event of problems had not worked.