By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Aviation Administration said on Monday it is reversing a four-year-old decision to rename safety messages to pilots and reinstating the prior “Notice to Airmen” term.
In December 2021, the FAA under former President Joe Biden renamed the messages “Notices to Air Missions,” commonly known as NOTAMs, saying it was “inclusive of all aviators and missions.”
The FAA referred questions to the notice disclosing the name change that did not offer a rationale for the change. NOTAMs contain essential information for pilots and others involved in flight operations but not known far enough in advance to be publicized by other means.
The FAA is also renaming on aeronautical charts the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” and Denali, Alaska natives’ name for North America’s tallest mountain, as “Mount McKinley” after a Trump order. The FAA said in a notice Monday it is in the process of updating its charts and data to reflect the name change.
Some Republicans criticized the 2021 NOTAM name change. Senator Ted Cruz said “instead of focusing on safety” the FAA was working to change the name to “signal its virtue.”
Earlier this month, the NOTAM system resumed operations after temporarily going down. Safety messages include items such as taxiway lights being out at an airport, nearby parachute activity or a specific runway being closed for construction.
A NOTAM outage in January 2023 led to the first nationwide U.S. ground stop since 2001, disrupting more than 11,000 flights.
Last month, President Donald Trump suggested without evidence that the deadly midair collision of two aircraft in Washington killing 67 was the result of the FAA’s efforts to hire a more diverse workforce.
The Republican president has made sweeping away any policy aimed at supporting diversity a hallmark of his fledgling administration, part of a broader effort to shrink, purge and remake the U.S. federal government to conform to his political priorities.
Trump issued an executive memorandum directing his administration to assess and undo diversity initiatives in aviation safety roles and directed the FAA to review the performance of all employees in critical safety positions.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
