Code Curiosities
The Midnight Glitch That Grounded 3,900 Planes
32:10
In 2023, the FAA's NOTAM system — an obscure but critical flight-safety database that traces its roots back to Cold War-era teletype machines — crashed overnight and held every American airplane on the ground until the sun came up. The culprit wasn't a cyberattack or a solar flare; it was a single corrupted file, placed there accidentally by a maintenance technician trying to fix something else.…