http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/141761.html

[Fair use/educational purposes]

A software "patch" that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) installed on its host computers before the Y2K rollover may have been responsible for the computer system crash that grounded planes all over the East Coast today, according to a specialist that supervises work on the FAA's computer systems.

Last week, workers from the Professional Airways Systems Specialists (PASS) - the union representing workers who fix and maintain the FAA's computer systems - told reporters the FAA had ordered an eleventh-hour computer patch to be applied to all of its host computer systems around the country, in an apparent last-minute effort to stave off complications from a possible Y2K glitch.

The system failure at the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center in Leesburg, Va. earlier this morning comes on the heels of a similar breakdown at an air traffic control center in Boston earlier this week, where a crashed computer hard drive held planes in limbo for hours and delayed flights at nearby airports.

PASS national assistant Mike Perrone said that although the two problems involved a malfunction in different types of equipment, the FAA may not have thoroughly tested the patch in its rush to fix its systems before the New Year.

"I'm not saying these two situations are identical, but when all of a sudden you've got two problems pop up just a few days after you've put a patch in...it's kind of hard to say that's just a coincidence," Perrone said.

Perrone said a new host computer at the Leesburg air traffic center became overloaded with flight information when Wednesday's data was not automatically cleared from its memory. The resulting shutdown forced the FAA to ground planes at all three Washington, D.C. area airports, causing backups at airports in Boston, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Raleigh, North Carolina, and all three New York airports.

FAA spokesman William Shumann, said Peronne's statement "borders on the irresponsible," and added that the true cause of today's glitch was not yet entirely clear. Shumann said the only thing that was clear was that the problem was not related to the software patch.

"The patch contains about 16 lines of code, inserted into a system with hundreds of thousands of lines of code," Shumann said, adding that the patch was put in place Dec. 30 to deal with the "very rare chance that something could happen exactly at the rollover to the New Year. There is no evidence that the patch has anything at all to do with this morning's outage," or the outage in Boston, Shumann said.

Shuman did say there seemed to be at least a "superficial resemblance" between the incidents at Boston and Washington in that "both apparently involved a problem in a peripheral unit that led to a problem in the main computer itself."

The equipment that broke down at the Washington center today was installed by the FAA in March of last year.

-- Steve (hartsman@ticon.net), January 06, 2000

Answers

Can't be Y2K. I know because Jane Garvey of the FAA said they were 100% compliant. She said so in Sept., 1998 then Dec., 1998, then Marrch, 1999, then the FAA "intentionally missed" the June 30, 1999 drop-dead dealine becasue they still had some stuff to finish. But they were 100% compliant by Sept. 30, 1999 (Jane said so). They were also 100% compliant while running around at Christmas time installing patches.

-- Think It (Through@Pollies.Duh), January 06, 2000.

"It's not a Y2K problem," Cantrell said. "It's a 'this system is unacceptable' problem."

-- Beached Whale (beached_whale@hotmail.com), January 06, 2000.

These people shouldn't be allowed to run an accounting package for a service station let alone keep track of all the planes in the United States!

-- Think It (Through@Pollies.Duh), January 06, 2000.

She also said "every system has been end-to-end tested". Using 'creative' test procedures of course.

-- a (a@a.a), January 06, 2000.

""I'm not saying these two situations are identical, but when all of a sudden you've got two problems pop up just a few days after you've put a patch in...it's kind of hard to say that's just a coincidence," Perrone said."

This is the first reasonably honest assessment I have seen of any of the multitude of outages and failures that have occurred since the rollover.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 06, 2000.

"The patch contains about 16 lines of code, inserted into a system with hundreds of thousands of lines of code," Shumann said

Oh. I feel so much better now that I know it was only 16 lines. I mean, if it had been 20 lines I might be afraid to get on a plane or something...

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), January 06, 2000.

Oh, then without fail, as I just noticed following shortly after that statement, is of course the GUBMINT immediately trying to cover up what anyone else says, until they get a chance to put their spin-lies on it...

FAA spokesman William Shumann, said Peronne's statement "borders on the irresponsible," and added that the true cause of today's glitch was not yet entirely clear. Shumann said the only thing that was clear was that the problem was not related to the software patch.

Just admit it Shumann, what bothers you is that it "borders on the truth."

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 07, 2000.

"Shumann said the only thing that was clear was that the problem was not related to the software patch."

Now I don't buy that out of umpteen millions of lines of code, they've been able to rule out only the sixteen lines in the patch. But a key question is, when did the computer's memory begin to fill up with junk. Did that start Wednesday or has it been going on since the patch was put in, but only came to light shortly after airlines resumed their full schedules.

-- David L (bumpkin@dnet.net), January 07, 2000.

David L,

They had to do the first 3-hour "reboot" on Monday after they left dozens of planes flying around waiting to land with no guidance but a walkie-talkie and a window.

So, if you figure since the rollover, it took all day Saturday, Sunday and part of Monday before the memory was loaded, then it seems just about right for it to fill up again over Tuesday, Wednesday, and part of Thursday.

I don't know shit about computers, but I bet I still know more than those gubmint morons. I predict they will need to do another crash and reboot this coming Sunday. Don't fly this Sunday, stay home and watch football.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 07, 2000.

Shuman did say there seemed to be at least a "superficial resemblance" between the incidents at Boston and Washington in that "both apparently involved a problem in a peripheral unit that led to a problem in the main computer itself."

Hmmmmm, can you say non-mission critical system failure which leads to mission critical failure?????????

-- Duke1983 (Duke1983@aol.com), January 07, 2000.

Gee, could we set up a betting pool over Mr. Perrone tendering his resignation in the morning? Closest to hour and minute wins!

-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), January 07, 2000.

Won't happen. PASS seems like a strong union, and will back up Perrone's statement, or at least his right to say it without recrimination.

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

Want to see how much damage I can do with just *one* line of code?

You wouldn't believe it.

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), January 07, 2000.

Any chance we could look at effects, in context, rather than yapping on and on and on about theoretical causes?

What was the cost in life, time and money of the grounding? In context?

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

Uh-oh, here comes Mr. public servant, which is another way of saying a gubmint shill like Flint. What you suggest is exactly the PROBLEM with the way the FAA has been operating for decades. Even though they know that an aircraft is dangerous, they refuse to force the manufacturers to take any corrective action UNTIL they have enough statistical information (i.e. dead bodies) to prove that it was indeed dangerous. (examine ValueJet incident, numerous Boeing incidents, and just about every mechanically caused crash in the books, and you'll see that the FAA knew about the problem beforehand and did nothing)

Paul Davis said earlier this week that these kinds of incidents are "acceptable" because they happen all the time. Where do we draw the line between how many computer crashes are acceptable and how many are not acceptable? Are we going to wait until we have a midair collision among the dozens of aircraft that are left waiting to be put into an approach pattern because the controllers have no visual reference on their relative positions? Are we going to wait until we have an incident which takes 300 lives, or should we wait until it is proven that a computer problem was responsible for the loss of 600 lives? Naah, come on don't overreact, let's be realistic. It shouldn't be considered out of the ordinary, or an indication that we have a major problem until at least 1,000 people get killed right? Yep, I think the FAA will probably use that number, because it is not likely that more than six or seven hundred will die in a crash between any two planes.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 07, 2000.