FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt has formed an independent review panel to examine the November 19, 2009 outage of the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI). The group of experts will survey the FTI’s architecture and recommend any immediate or future changes to improve its reliability even further. They will also review the management of the system to ensure the most stringent protocols and safeguards are in place. “Last month’s outage was unacceptable and we need to understand what happened and make certain it doesn’t happen again,” said Babbitt. “This panel is going to take a hard look at every part of the FTI operation. We have an extremely reliable system but we need to have the confidence that problems can be solved quickly and efficiently so our air traffic controllers and aircraft operators have the tools they need and travelers aren’t inconvenienced.” The panel will deliver two reports to Babbitt early next year. The first will focus on the November outage and contain suggestions for any immediate changes that need to be made to the FTI system, management procedures, or oversight. The second will examine FTI’s present and future architecture as it relates to emerging technology and future FAA systems.