BOSTON - Radar Problems Cause Delays at Boston Airport, 2nd Time in Less than a Month

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[Fair use for education and research purpose only] Tuesday May 9, 2:02 pm Eastern Time

Title: Radar problems cause delays at Boston airport

BOSTON, May 9 (Reuters) - Radar problems caused delays at Boston's Logan Airport on Tuesday for the second time in less than a month, at one point halting all traffic on the heavily travelled New York-Boston route, a federal official said.

Travelers could expect delays to last throughout the day as the number of flights in and out of the nation's ninth-busiest airport was cut to 24 an hour. Normally, more than 60 flights per hour can land in clear weather.

It was the second time in a month that the ASR-9 radar system at Logan has failed. The system is made by Northrop Grumman Corp (NYSE:NOC - news), the nation's fifth-largest defence contractor.

``At 12:35 p.m. (1635 GMT), we began experiencing problems with the ASR-9,'' Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters said. Controllers switched to a backup system after noticing that some of the information that is supposed to appear on their screens was missing.

Peters said the FAA had found the problem -- a failed piece of computer hardware -- about 30 minutes later and said the part would be replaced after midnight, when there were no scheduled flights.

``You can expect delays to remain throughout the day, until the problem is fixed,'' Peters said.

The system had been shut down on April 22 when high winds crippled a radar antenna.

At the time of that incident, Northrop Grumman said the ASR-9 system was operating in 10 other countries and had never experienced a similar failure. It was up to the FAA to properly install and maintain the radar system, the company said.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/000509/i4.html

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-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), May 09, 2000

Answers

Radar glitch causes delays at Logan Airport By Associated Press, 05/09/00

BOSTON - A computer glitch caused delays at Logan International Airport today.

There were no reports of serious incidents resulting from the problem, which caused 40 minute delays for inbound flights.

FAA officials said the airport's arrival rate also dropped to 24 flights per hour as opposed to the normal rate of about 50 flights per hour.

The problem was in hardware in the airport's radar guide system. The glitch caused air traffic controllers to lack some flight information, including altitude and air speed. Controllers moved to a backup system.

Officials said the problem was detected at about 12:35 p.m. and corrected by 1:05 p.m. The problem was not connected to a new radar antenna that replaced one knocked over by wind last month, officials said.

http://www.boston.com/news/daily/09/logan.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 10, 2000.


When they cut the number of flights from sixty to twenty four per hour that's a lot of disruption.

-- Uncle Fred (dogboy45@bigfoot.com), May 10, 2000.

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