‘Investment Is Required’ Says American Airlines CEO on FAA Outage

American Airlines CEO Robert Isom commented on the recent FAA outage that left nearly 13,000 flights delayed or canceled when the Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights due to a technical error in its Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system on Wednesday morning, which we now know was due to a damaged file, saying “investment is required” to prevent this from happening again.

Isom spoke to CNBC during a “SquawkBox” interview about the airline’s fourth quarter, then began commenting on the FAA outage. This was the first time the FAA called a ground stop since September 11, 2001.

“We can always spend more. It takes minds to come together and really look at the future, where we want to go,” said Isom. “That takes leadership, and I know with Secretary Buttigieg and his administration, that we’re going to find our way. It’s an instance like this…how we recover and then how we learn from that is absolutely the key.”

He also mentioned how, with a large government system like the FAA’s NOTAM system, updating it and making it stronger will likely take time and what may be billions of dollars. “It’s something that we have to plan for and build over a number of years,” he added.

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