Jan 6, 2000 - 11:23 AM

Computer Problem That Caused Flight Delays Fixed

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Aviation Administration said a computer problem today that caused flight delays of two or more hours across the eastern one-third of the nation has been fixed and is not believed to have been related to Y2K.

Flight delays began after a computer at the FAA's Washington center in Leesburg, Va. began experiencing problems transferring data about 6:15 a.m. EST, said Drucella Andersen, a spokesman at FAA's headquarters in Washington. Normal operations resumed at 9:49 a.m.

"These problems caused an overload in the computer so the center transitioned to a backup system," she said. "The exact cause of the failure is not known at this time. It does not appear to be Y2K-related."

Delays were experienced by passengers traveling to or from Boston, John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Raleigh-Durham, N.C., Reagan National, Dulles International and Baltimore-Washington International, the FAA said.

The problem occurred in a computer that processes information sent to the center in Leesburg from various radar systems, other air traffic control centers around the East Coast as well as flight plan data filed by airlines and individual pilots, said William Shumann, another FAA spokesman in Washington.

"The backup system is safe, but it's a much slower system with less capacity and so we have to hold airplanes on the ground," he said.

Steve Letzler of Baldwin, N.Y., said in a telephone interview that his wife called him from her cell phone after sitting on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport for two hours.

"They were just sitting there," Letzler said. "Everyone was antsy apparently. She just wanted to know if I had heard anything. The pilot said that apparently there was some sort of radar problem."

On Monday, a computer malfunction at the FAA's center in Nashua, N.H., delayed flights at airports in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. FAA officials said a backup computer system was used when the main computer at the air traffic control center experienced problems for about three hours Monday night.

Eliot Brenner, FAA's spokesman in Washington, said then that the problem was not related to Y2K, the term used to describe glitches that occurred as computers make the rollover from 1999 to 2000.

The FAA's Boston center in Nashua 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.

AP-ES-01-06-00 1121EST ) Copyright 2000 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Brought to you by the Tampa Bay Online Network

-- Uncle Bob (UNCLB0B@AOL.COM), January 06, 2000

Answers

Can anyone else remember a situation like this before? Has there ever been such a huge disruption in airtraffic due to a computer problem? My memory is lousy and I never paid much attention unless someone I loved was in the air. Any radar control buffs to give us a perspective? Thanks.

-- a mom (tryingto@remember.com), January 06, 2000.

Problems transferring data from one computer to another is NOT a Y2K problem? Give me a break. What caused the data to be corrupted in the first place, because this sounds like what happened. The FAA has their problems to be sure, but this is the first I've heard that one computer couldn't process data received from another. Otherwise the whole system would have crashed years ago!

By the way, their back-up system is on older computers and operations are run semi-manually. If it wasn't for these contingency plans, and for TCAS, the whole system would be down. For public safety, the FAA should ground the planes and get this problem FIXED.

-- Marie (pray4peace@compuserve.com), January 06, 2000.

Gee. O'Hare on back-up generators ... oh no, sorry: back-up generators for their backup generators: the first set failed so they're playing off the bench. And ATC in the Northeast on back-up systems ... a little slower maybe, can't quite handle the normal load. Oh yes, and that thread about the reservoirs in Montana and Washington draining to enhance streamflow and power generation on tje Columbia downstream. But all is well. We'll have it fixed over the weekend.

-- (squirrel@huntr.com), January 06, 2000.

Of course its NOT a y2k problem. Are you all idiots? Everyone knows that y2k is over. The roll-over already took place: planes didn't fall out of the sky, microwaves didn't stop working, and the governement didn't quit. More doomer hoax stuff.

Doesn't anyone pay attention to our wonderful media?

Sheehz!!

-- z (zarathu@epix.net), January 06, 2000.

OK, let's assume it *was* a y2k error, why not? You will notice that it was fixed in, oh, 2 or 3 hours! Isn't that amazing?

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the majority of these "not y2k errors" were related to y2k in some way. What matters is how long they take to repair and how much damage they do.

And to be honest, I predicted mostly manageable problems with some glaring exceptions. I apologized yesterday because we hadn't seen the glaring exceptions, so my prediction wasn't entirely correct. NOT that I'm rooting for big problems, but I *am* still expecting them.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 06, 2000.

"Major disruption" is not really a good way to describe 90 minute delays for a few hours in a few airports. The airways take hits like that on a depressingly regular basis.

It appears the problem is fixed now, anyway.

-- Craig Kenneth Bryant (ckbryant@mindspring.com), January 06, 2000.

I'd bet this has nothing to do with Y2K. Can anyone say why they think it would be, other than blaming every computer glitch on Y2k? Do you think it was software? And if so, what part of the FAA software deals with dates? Or if it was hardware, what would have gone wrong? Do you believe some embedded chip rolled over 6 days late?

Basically, most of you have little or no understanding of software and or hardware, you just latched onto the likes of Yourdon and North for some unknown reason.

And it really shouldn't come down to that. Did Y2K problems exist? Yes. Is it a hard problem to fix? No. Did billions of dollars get spent to find and fix bugs? Yes. Did the infrustructure fail? No. Can you all get food, water, heat, phone access, internet access, tv, radio, power, money? Yes. Were Yourdon, North, Hyatt and others correct in their predictions? Not even close. So what does that tell you? That the main proponents of Y2K disasters weren't even close.

And it's not a surprise. I looked on Gary North's site a lot, and listened to him on the Art Bell show. And you know what? He doesn't know a thing about computers. For all his talk of embedded chip problems, I didn't see one schematic or documented case of this happening. And doesn't it bother any of the "Doomers" that the big proponents of Y2K were either not computer people or selling a lot of books?

I truly believe the Y2K problem existed, however, I don't believe the cheif proponents understood the problem themselves. So what are you believing in? A fact or hype?

Not one of us is even qualified to judge if any computer problem is Y2k related, because we're not there looking at the problem. The IT world is besodden with scores of unqualified people setting up systems for people, and I'm betting that's the cause of most problems we're seeing today. Second-rate IT consultants masquerading as Y2K experts, setting up equipment in a sloppy manner, whether the problem required it or not.

Everyone, just chill. The world is not coming to an end.

-- Shane Brady (shane@jxie.com), January 06, 2000.

Yes, it only took 2-3 hrs to fix. But if problems continue to surface each taking 2-3 hrs to fix, at some point, it begins to "matter". especially in the accounting/supply chain end. Those of us who never expected "meltdown" on Jan.1 but DID expect a slowly escalating number of glitches gradually clogging up the works and bringing things to a crawl and possible standstill, are being proved correct in our assessment. Not a heart attack, but cancer.

-- sr (sr@se.com), January 06, 2000.

Small question -

What is the next issue to talk about in this type of forum when the "Y2K-related" problems fade away, the economy chugs along, and society continues to function??? I say shut call Phil Greenspun and have him shut this puppy down. The exchanges going on here are not doing us any good, they're rehashing old themes, and we're doing nothing but standing around debating who was right, where's the 'spiracy coming from, and why is everyone lying to us??

Shut it down, and let's get on with our lives, myself included.

-- Larry Goldberg (goldberg_lawrence@hotmail.com), January 06, 2000.

"but DID expect a slowly escalating number of glitches gradually clogging up the works and bringing things to a crawl and possible standstill"

Sure, I expected that too, but where are they? I haven't seen any "escalating" bugs (glitches? Where did that PR friendly word suddenly come from?). They all seem like isolated incidents. Why not wait and see rather than predicting The Beginning Of The End. It's been done before on this group, again and again and again, and it's been erroneous every time.

-- Servant (public_service@yahoo.com), January 07, 2000.

See related Flight Control Center Problems May Be Y2K Related - PASS article and thread.

-- Steve (hartsman@ticon.net), January 07, 2000.