BELOIT, Wis. — The Federal Aviation Administration’s full flight shutdown created chaos, and one aviation tech leader said she understands exactly how the troubling computer failure could happen inside the regulated agency.
Kerry Frank said she got into aviation technology because she saw something that bothered her.
“I can’t imagine carrying this every day to work,” she said while lugging a big black briefcase up a flight of stairs in Beloit’s Irontek business incubator.
“And this can weigh, depending on the airlines, 30 to 60 pounds,” Frank said. “All it has in it is paper.”
Frank explained that this paper was carried by every pilot on every commercial plane. The luggage contained every document the FAA requires, from the flight manifestos and alerts to those bulky Boeing and Airbus equipment manuals.
“And I was like, why has nobody changed this?” Frank said about why 16 years ago, she and her husband, Duke, dared to dream and disrupt. They did it all with seed funding and support from Beloit’s Irontek incubator.
Frank’s company, Comply365, digitized the airline industry, bringing the briefcase of paper into the 21st century.
“We own most of the American market, we have clients in Hong Kong and Australia and Dubai and all over the world, and we became the leader of change to use just this iPad, instead of carrying this big paperweight,” she said.
Frank said that all pilots use Comply365 for seeing last-minute flight changes, so all of them received real-time, full ground stop updates when the FAA’s recently digitized NOTAM notification system failed.
“And that was developed in 1947. And it was really developed after ships that had like these alerts that talked about what was happening on the seas. And we did the same in aviation,” Frank said of the NOTAM system. “So unfortunately, that’s what went down.”
Frank said she fears the regulated industry could expect more groundings due to a lack of tech and infrastructure updates.
“And we just have to be patient and give these people grace. I know it’s really hard, but when you’re at an airport, those gate agents, they don’t know any more than what they’re telling you,” Frank said. “Unfortunately, sometimes they are the last to know. So just be kind to them and just try to pack patience.”