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FAA Computer Glitch Causes Flight Delays
WASHINGTON_A cascading computer failure in the nation's air-traffic control system caused severe flight delays and some cancellations Friday along the East Coast.
A computer system in Atlanta that processes pilots' flights plans and sends them to air-traffic controllers failed early Friday, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere said. In response, the agency rerouted the system's functions to another computer in Salt Lake City, which overloaded because of the increased volume of data, magnifying the problem.
The FAA could not immediately calculate the number of flight delays caused by the problem, which was made worse by bad weather, Spitaliere said. Airlines experienced thousands of delays, some lasting several hours, in what was shaping up to be one of the country's worst days this year for air travel.
Although the computer malfunctions were fixed shortly before 11 a.m. Friday, their impact lingered on into the late afternoon, especially in New York, where computer systems took two extra hours to connect with the central system in Atlanta, the FAA said. Spitaliere said the flight delays in the rest of the country were not as severe.
Delays for arriving flights at New York City's LaGuardia Airport averaged nearly four hours early Friday evening, the FAA said.
Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said the problem forced controllers to enter flight information manually, which he described as a time-consuming practice. "With some of these East Coast airports, nothing is getting in right now," Church said Friday afternoon.
AMR Corp.'s American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner acknowledged the computer troubles and said the nation's largest carrier experienced about 50 cancellations on the East Coast, with New York's LaGuardia departures being hit the hardest.
