FAA’s computer glitch delays hundreds of flights across US

An unprecedented malfunction in the computer software of the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has caused delay of hundreds of flights at airports across the United States from Texas to New York.  The malfunction – which took place in the afternoon of August 26, 2008 – in the system that processes flight plans before airlines are allowed to take off occurred near Atlanta, Georgia, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Chicago’s Department of Aviation said some inbound and outbound flights at O’Hare International Airport were delayed by an average of 45 minutes as a result of the computer glitch.

Flights at Midway Airport in Chicago were delayed for up to 90 minutes.

Delays of up to 30 minutes were reported at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. These two airports also had experienced thunderstorms and other weather-related problems.

The facility at Georgia processes flight plans for the eastern half of the United States.

A statement from the Federal Aviation Administration said its website that tracks airport status showed delays involving some three dozen major airports across the United States.

Hank Krakowski, chief operating officer of the FAA, told reporters that “there was an internal software processing failure” and that “the FAA does not believe it was due to hackers or terrorism.”

Communications with pilots and radars that air traffic controllers use to direct planes were not affected.

Krakowski said that he could not immediately say how many flights were affected, though the number would at least be in the hundreds. Airports were affected in cities including Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Dallas, Baltimore, Boston, Washington and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Following the computer malfunction, airline flight plans had to be entered into computers manually and then processed by the system in Salt Lake City, the FAA said.

The Federal Aviation Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Transportation with authority to regulate and oversee all aspects of civil aviation in the United States. The FAA is the single most influential government-run aviation agency in the world, with the European Aviation Safety Agency coming a close second.

Airlines in the United States need the FAA’s approval of flight plans before they can take off. The agency has two hubs for processing flight plans  – in Hampton, Georgia, and Salt Lake City.

In June 2007, failures in the FAA’s center near Atlanta and later in Salt Lake City had compelled the agency to process flight plans manually – which also had led to flight delays.