[outages] communication breakdown @ FAA

[Michael.Washington at fitchratings.com]

Flight Delays Caused by Computer Failure, FAA Says


By Sholnn Freeman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 27, 2008; A03


The Federal Aviation Administration blamed a computer breakdown for
delaying hundreds of flights yesterday throughout the country, including
Baltimore and Washington.


The computer system, housed in a facility near Atlanta, failed shortly
after 1:25 p.m., FAA officials said. The system handles basic flight plan
data that must be distributed to air traffic controllers around the country
before planes take off.


So far, the FAA has estimated that "hundreds" of flights were affected by
the failure yesterday. The problem was not a "safety issue," the FAA said.
A spokeswoman said the agency never lost the ability to communicate with
aircraft. A computer failure last week apparently caused similar delays.


The glitch came as a new blow to the FAA, which has been getting extensive
criticism for the nation's chronic flight delays. The agency, which is
asking Congress for hundreds of millions of dollars to modernize air
traffic control equipment, said it was too early to give a specific cause
for yesterday's failure, although it ruled out hacking.


After the failure in Atlanta yesterday, a backup system in Salt Lake City
came online to pick up the slack but immediately became overwhelmed, the
FAA said. Employees then had to enter flight data manually, resulting in
delays throughout the afternoon. By early evening, the FAA reported that
the Salt Lake City system had resolved its backlog and was operating
normally.


Late yesterday the agency said computer engineers were still working to put
the Atlanta system back into operation.


"It looks like we are slowly starting to dig out of this," Hank Krakowski,
chief operating officer for FAA's air traffic organization, told reporters
on a 5 p.m. conference call.


According to an internal FAA document, the system, called the National
Airspace Data Interchange Network, crashed on Thursday and caused in 134
departure delays. The Salt Lake City system also took over but had problems
with the high queue level, the document said. The system also failed in
June 2007.


Doug Church, spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers
Association, said the computer problem showed that the agency was too
focused on deploying new technology rather than maintenance of current
equipment.


"The FAA is doing things on the cheap when it comes to technology and
infrastructure," he said.


Flights in Baltimore and Washington were hit with delays of 75 minutes or
more. But Rob Yingling, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Washington
Airports Authority, said the problem didn't cause widespread cancellations.


Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International airport took the brunt of the
computer failure with 40 planes backed up at about 5 p.m. At one point
yesterday, the glitch caused delays of 90 minutes at Chicago's Midway
International Airport and hour-long delays in Charlotte. Boston's Logan
International airport experienced 45-minute delays.





                                                                           
             virendra rode //                                              
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Does anyone have any further information regarding this failure?

Apparently the outage occurred at FAA facility in Hampton, Ga., that
processes flight plans.


regards,
/virendra
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