FAA Software Problems, Daunting Delays
The Federal Aviation Administration (Web site: www.faa.gov) is taking some heat this last week of August for an apparent computer software glitch that curdled traffic from Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) to the East Coast yesterday. Hardest hit were Atlanta (ATL), Boston (BOS), Baltimore/Washington (BOS), Chicago O'Hare (ORD) and Chicago Midway (MDW). At MDW, delays reached 90 minutes yesterday (Tuesday, August 26) according to FAA Spokesman Paul Takemoto.
Takemoto says some 646 flights were affected nationwide. The problem emanated from an FAA facility near Atlanta. That facility is a critical node for NADIN, the National Airspace Data Interchange Network. The system that processes flight plans didn't work right. A back-up facility in Salt Lake City came on line, but was swamped.
So, was the flying public endangered? Takemoto says no. “Safety was not impacted. It had nothing do with the way we track airplanes.”
Things started to go wrong at 1:25pm (Eastern Time) yesterday. By 1:13am this morning (Wednesday, August 27), Takemoto says NADIN was fully operational once again.
FAA is investigation just what went wrong. Takemoto tells Cheapflights that NADIN “is old,” and that it will be replaced beginning January 2009.
The cascade of delays comes at the end of a relatively placid summer. Air Traffic Control problems have been muted over the past 18 months, nothing like the headline-grabbing cancellations and delays that seemed endemic not that long ago. Perhaps mitigating the effect of the problems this time around is that there are fewer airplanes out there subject to delay.
Airlines have slashed schedules as the result of high fuel prices, easing congestion somewhat in some markets. Still subject to onerous back-ups are airports in the New York metropolitan area - notably Newark (EWR), Kennedy (JFK), and LaGuardia (LGA). The Department of Transportation (Web site: www.dot.gov) wants to experiment with auctioning off take-off and landing slots at New York airports as a way to dampen delays. The airline industry is unambiguously opposed to the idea.
© Cheapflights Ltd Jerry Chandler