Air-Traffic Control Malfunction Causes Severe Flight Delays

Jun 09, 07:24 AM

Current Headlines: By ALAN ZIBEL

By Alan Zibel

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON

A cascading computer failure in the nation's air-traffic control system caused severe flight delays and some cancellations along the East Coast on Friday.

A computer system in Atlanta that processes pilots' flight 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 due to 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.

Doug Church , a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association , said the problem forced controllers to enter flight information manually .

"With some of these East Coast airports, nothing is getting in right now," Church said Friday afternoon.

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