Monday January 3 11:32 PM ET

Computer Malfunction Delays Flights

NASHUA, N.H. (AP) - A computer malfunction at the Federal Aviation Administration's Boston Center here delayed flights at airports in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York Monday night.

The main computer at the air traffic control center went down around 7 p.m., said Jim Peters, spokesman for the FAA in New England. He said the problem was corrected by about 10 p.m. The center used a backup computer system during the outage.

``As a result of the outage we incurred extensive delays throughout the Northeast, both for flights arriving and departing,'' he said.

Peters said FAA officials would not know what caused the malfunction until Tuesday. (Why, because you have to talk to that liar Jane Garvey first to find out how to explain it?)

``Without knowing what has caused the problem, it would be premature to speculate,'' he said. ``It may turn out to be something other than Y2K.'' (No, I'd be willing to be it WILL turn out to be something other than Y2K, because you'd never admit if it was.)

In Washington, Eliot Brenner, FAA assistant administrator for public affairs, said: ``The problems in Boston are not Y2K related and they are over now.'' (How do you know that? Mr. Peters said they won't know until Tuesday! You lying sack.)

The Boston Center controls flights over more than 160,000 square miles of air space from the Atlantic Ocean to western New York and from the Canadian border to south of Long Island in New York.

Departures and arrivals at Logan International Airport in Boston were delayed by at least 30 minutes because of the malfunction, according to airport officials.

Departing flights at both Kennedy International Airport in New York City and Newark International Airport in New Jersey were delayed by up to 75 minutes, said Sgt. Reinaldo Gonzalez of the Port Authority police. Shorter delays were experienced at La Guardia Airport in New York, Gonzalez said. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey runs all three airports.

In Chicago, radar displays used to direct traffic into O'Hare International Airport went down for about two minutes Monday afternoon, causing minor delays.

The FAA said air traffic controllers never lost audio contact with the five planes in the air and the five on the ground at O'Hare at the time.

MCI, which runs the system that failed, blames the outage on a power surge at an O'Hare generator. FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said the problem was not Y2K-related, and planes were never in jeopardy. (Yeah, right. Aircraft on a descending approach to the busiest airport in the world, and you don't know where they are. Lot of good your walkie talkie is gonna do when they have a Big MAC (Mid Air Collision) asswipe.

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To put it bluntly, this is BULLCRAP!! The Y2K bug is now more dangerous than ever, because they didn't fix it, now it is being ignored, and no one knows when it will show up. Thanks to that #%*^@!& Jane Garvey and that @%^*+!% Koskinen!!

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 04, 2000

Answers

Sorry, I'm so PISSED I forgot the #!@$%&!* link!!...

Computer Malfunction Delays Flights

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 04, 2000.

Yeah and when one falls to the ground killing several hundred, the investigators will finally determine from the black box that it was not after all a Y2K related accident, rather the fault of the "dead" pilot.

-- Notforlong (Fsur439@aol.com), January 04, 2000.

LOL Hawk! "The Y2K bug is now more dangerous than ever, because they didn't fix it, now it is being ignored, and no one knows when it will show up."

I've had that fact eating away at me for days now but what really shocked me was when my 9 year old son made this statement nearly word for word to me driving into town yesterday, after listening to yet another 'happy face' report on the radio! It was the first y2k- related comment he's made since the roll-over. Simple, logical conclusion.

It would appear that the failure rate is picking up momentum. They had better become more creative with their excuses.

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), January 04, 2000.

Thank you, Hawk for making another of my predicitions come true.

I predicted that EVERY computer problem would become a Y2K problem to doomers, once 1/1/2000 had passed. Now it has.

And, BTW, the FAA experiences several of these types of occurences in a normal week. By the end of the first, they had claimed that the rate of incidence was DOWN overall, that their remediation has been so successful that they are MORE reliable that prior to 1/1/2000.

Got anything to prove the contrary? A chart would be nice, showing the rate of incidence per week for 98, 99, and the first week of 2000.

You know, you really should stop using that computer. It will infect your house wiring and blow all the fuses and destroy your life - after all, Y2K just can't be fixed. Can it?

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), January 04, 2000.

Yes Will, children are very intuitive, and in many ways I think it is becoming more dangerous. I think Ed had the best analogy when he said it is being treated like a sexually transmitted disease. No one wanted to admit they had it, they never got rid of it, but they'll still say anything to make people forget about it. I think there is probably a lot of pressure form lawyers and insurance companies to deny it.

I just listened to another brilliant TV news person mention this story about the FAA, saying they would find out tomorrow what the cause was but they thought it was "not Y2K related." Seconds later, she moved on to the next story, which was of course how the millenium bug had been squashed, and how many wonder if it was a hoax. She never questioned for a moment what the FAA said.

Funny how they wouldn't talk about it at all for months, and now we are hearing the words "not Y2K related" dozens of times each day. It's amazing. And scary, with respect to flying. The way I see these FAA people talk makes me think I probably won't be flying for a long time. Not really afraid to die, but I think I'll take a train anyway. Even two minutes without radar screens is a disaster waiting to happen. I wish Jane Garvey could have been in the pilot's seat of one of those planes approaching O'Hare when they lost contact. Thank God most pilots have nerves of steel. One of the other articles said they also lost audio contact, although this one denies it. It's disgusting.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 04, 2000.

Get lost Paul, you sick bastard. We're talking about people's lives at steak here, so whether or not it is Y2K, Jane Garvey shouldn't have told the world that it was safe, when it is her job to MAKE SURE THAT IT IS! Y2K took a bad situation with the FAA and made it worse, and they LIED about it!

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 04, 2000.

You are getting sleeeepy, veeery sleeeepy. Your eyelids are becoming heaaavy. Now repeat after me, "human errror". That's right. When you awaken, every time you read a press release.....you shall repeat, "human errror".

I'll just ignore the peanut vendor above your last post, Hawk.

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), January 04, 2000.

LOl! I wonder how Paul can consider this type of incident as "acceptable" just because it has happened before. How does he decide which plane he is going to be on, and when is he going to choose one of those that gets tallied up as a statistic. He probably doesn't even fly!

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 04, 2000.

Oh HE flies at night.....during full moons.

Tell us Paul, what exactly were you attempting to communicate to us? Hmmmm? This sort of thing was happening ALOT *before* they began addressing the bug? (wow, consistent screen failures. I feel much better)

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), January 04, 2000.

Hawk,

You said,"Get lost Paul, you sick bastard. We're talking about people's lives at steak here,"

Would that "steak" be with a baked potato?

-- (I'm@pol.ly.com), January 04, 2000.

Tonight, Tuesday, January 4, my son is flying from New York to Florida to attend a family funeral. I am very worried.

-- Lurkess (Lurkess@Lurking.Net), January 04, 2000.

Very intelligent comeback, with substance... NOT!

-- Powder (Powder47keg@aol.com), January 04, 2000.

Pretty soon the "not Y2K-related" excuse is going to fall flat. I'm looking forward to seeing how the press is going to make us swallow government and corporate "explanations" for future screw-ups! Equivalent to "the dog ate my homework" routine, perhaps?? Or maybe the "just listen quietly, my children, while we pat you on the head and send you home... don't be afraid, "we'll take care of you"!!!

I imagine all of us on this Board will get a good laugh, that is if the situation is not dangerous. However, the scary part is if something comes up that is dangerous and they can't come up with a decent explanation, we won't be laughing then. We should be demanding answers. Corporations and governments lie to the people because we LET them get away with it!

As to the FAA, the pilots all know it is "fix on failure" and the Boston incident proves it. Pilots may have "nerves of steel", but they have "mouths of sailors" when this sort of thing happens. Those black boxes are an earful.

-- Marie (pray4peace@compuserve.com), January 04, 2000.

Are you and your lives nothing without Y2K? An 8 year old child, probably with a lifetime of nightmares because a parent has scared him needlessly.

Do you want Y2K to be a disaster so badly that you will twist everything you see and read into being a Y2K problem with everyone lieing about it except you and your co-addicts?

Or has the threat of Y2K twisted your mind so badly that you cannot live without it? Is living without it impossible for you? Are you addicted to it? Perhaps counseling would help bring you back to reality. Life as we kkew it went on, you should too.

I wonder if Ed is proud of himself when he reads posts like yours? If he bothers to read them, but then he says people are responsible for what they believe, not him.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), January 04, 2000.

From the Boston Globe:

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/004/metro/Glitch_dela ys_many_flights+.shtml

Glitch delays many flights

N.H. computer crash holds planes at Logan

By Tara Yaekel, Globe Correspondent, 1/4/2000

assengers at Logan Airport sat on the tarmac for as long as an hour and a half last night when a mainframe computer crashed at a Nashua air traffic control center. The problem caused major delays at airports from Boston to Washington, D.C., which were expected to last until this morning.

Officials for the Federal Aviation Administration said late last night they were not sure if the computer shutdown was related to Y2K problems.

''The cause of the outage has not been identified yet,'' said FAA New England spokesman Jim Peters. ''It would be premature to speculate on whether this was a Y2K-related outage.''

The delays frustrated many travelers, who were forced to sit in idle planes on the runway.

Samantha Aroute of France, who was on a Continental flight slated to leave for New York at 8 p.m., was still waiting inside the plane for takeoff at 9:30 p.m.

''Some people are working, some people are sleeping, some people want to get off,'' Aroute said in an interview on her cell phone. ''We all want to get where we're going.''

The malfunctioning computer system, which was installed in July, is used by air traffic controllers to process radar and flight information. Computers indicate latitude, flight routes, and other critical information for aircraft, Peters said.

Controllers were forced to use a backup computer system and write flight information by hand, limiting the number of planes that could take off at a time, Peters said.

Planes landing at or departing from airports in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, and other cities in the Northeast saw delays up to several hours. FAA officials said they won't know until this morning how many flights had been affected, Peters said.

The Nashua control center monitors flights as far east as 100 miles off the New England coast and as far west as the area around Albany, N.Y., Peters said.

In Boston, he said, planes were expected to be running late until this morning as the airport caught up with its schedule.

The computer glitch compounded evening delays at Logan, where traffic was already stalled because of weather problems, Logan spokesman Phil Orlandella said.

Yesterday's computer crash, which occurred at about 7 p.m. and took more than 21/2 hours to fix, was the first major problem with the control center's mainframe system since it was installed last summer, Peters said.

Most of the flights affected were large carriers that fly above 17,000 feet. Many small business flights and private planes that can fly at lower elevations were not affected, he said.

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), January 04, 2000.

Nope - PAul - there were no repeated failures like this last year.

Other than the shutdowns and slowdowns caused by FAA remediation and replacement of their aging systems.....to prevent year 2000 failures. Hoffmeister was able to review every news story on the FAA last year - and he did a good job predicting the FAA's rollover success - for which I congratulate him.

These kind of failures simply did not occur "regularly". Nice try, but your facts don't fly.

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By the way - outside of the standard news media quote, who actually predicted "planes would fall form the skies"?

-- Robert A Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), January 04, 2000.

Cherri, obviously you too are addicted.

-- haha (haha@haha.haha), January 04, 2000.

Let's clear the air a bit, shall we?

Number One: Flight crew members are sensitive to safety of flight issues. Their decisions affect the safety of their passengers and themselves and they know it. They can and do decide not to fly.

Number Two: Pilots have TCAS, VHF radios and visual checks. TCAS gives them a margin of safety, by alerting them to the presence of other aircraft in their area. They can use their VHF radios to talk to other pilots as required and especially in case of a ground system failure. They normally look out their windows and watch for other aircraft. Training for adverse situations helps them to adapt as required. Pilots are generally quite intelligent and by necessity have a sharp mental acuity.

These are two good reasons to reduce the fear level in flying in general and especially now.

All of that having been said, ANY reduction in the safety of flight systems, increases the risk of flight.

To maintain safe air travel we cannot allow reductions in the safety margins.

If the air traffic control systems are weak and unreliable, then the aircraft must be spaced out further. Safety has to be the primary issue.

-- snooze button (alarmclock_2000@yahoo.com), January 04, 2000.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I (mis?)understand it, the old, non-Y2K compliant FAA systems have been completely replaced with a new, y2k- "compliant" system known as STARS.

STARS has more bells and whistles but is still full of bugs, and is not well-favored by the actual traffic controllers. These bugs pop up seemingly at random and are often quite serious in nature. That's why flights got delayed for hours.

Am I right?

-- coprolith (coprolith@rocketship.com), January 04, 2000.

That's correct coprolith.

Cherri: After listening to the 'happyhappyspinn' on the radio, I suggested to my son that it appeared we wouldn't have much to be concerned about as far as the bug. "Looks like they did a good job fixing it", I told him. He's just smarter than you. I wouldn't want you to loose any sleep over the emotional destruction of a wounded inner-child. It's a really OLD Polly ploy and you can stick it in your ear sister. :)

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), January 04, 2000.

snooze,

"They normally look out their windows and watch for other aircraft."

ROTFLMAO!!!

Do you know what kind of visibility they have from those windows, and how much time they have to react when they see a plane coming at them?

Lol, sorry I had to laugh, that is too funny! :-)

Cherri,

No one is trying to scare children, but they are not stupid either. What are we supposed to do now, tell them that they cannot watch the news or read a paper because they might not believe all of the lies from the government?

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 04, 2000.

Sometimes the truth can be frightening, but is there anyone here who would prefer to be lied to??

From what I understand, the FAA ATC system was the mission-critical system that was being remediated. The last software patch was put in New Year's eve.

Other systems that are not date-sensitive were not fixed. In aviation, TIME, not DATE functions, are tracked.

However, the entire FAA system needs an overhaul, because aging systems can and do malfunction, Y2K or not. Here's a solution: write to your local Congressman or Congresswoman to fund new computers for the FAA. Tell them to quit wasting public money on "fix on failure." The money is long overdue, and if any agency needs it, it's this one. Aging machinery cannot be made new -- they must be replaced.

-- Marie (pray4peace@compuserve.com), January 04, 2000.