Tuesday's mass flight delays caused by an electronic communication failure at a Federal Aviation Administration facility near Atlanta drew new criticism for an agency that has been scrutinized over air traffic controller staffing levels and inspection standards for its ground-based equipment.
The software glitch that delayed flights at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and nationwide, came as the FAA celebrates its 50th anniversary.
Kathleen Bergen is spokesperson at the FAA’s Naden facility at Hampton, south of Atlanta:
“The system went down during a normal, daily software load. Apparently a file was corrupted and that brought the system down… the Naden outage resulted in about 650 flight delays nationwide -- 140 of those in Atlanta.”Hartsfield-Jackson is the busiest airport in the world, but Bergen says no flights were endangered from the software failure:
“The fact that we are in Atlanta, it is a busy airport, all our flight plans are processed through our facility in Hampton did create a bit of difficulty yesterday. But the important thing is that all the fights departed and arrived safely.”Bergen says the FAA plans to update the Atlanta, and Salt Lake City facilities – which handles all flight plans west of the Mississippi -- early next year.
The Northeast was hardest hit by the delays prompted Tuesday by a glitch at a Hampton, Ga., facility that processes flight plans for the eastern half of the U.S.
As of Wednesday morning, the FAA said that the situation around the country had returned to normal, with most delays from the malfunction being cleared up Tuesday night. But spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere said the investigation into what caused the problem is still ongoing, and she did not know when it would be completed.
"It usually takes a while to be quite honest," she said.A spokesman for Hartsfield-Jackson, did not return a call seeking comment on the impact there from Tuesday's episode. Bergen said officials at the Atlanta airport were entering flight data manually to try to speed things up.
Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, said the episode "once again highlights the need to reform and repair a broken system." His Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, said "airline passengers are sick and tired of delays and cancellations." And the nonprofit Travel Industry Association called it "one more example of America's deteriorating air travel system."Discount carrier AirTran Airways, which has its hub at the Atlanta airport, said in a statement that because of the suburban FAA center snafu it was at one point taking up to an hour for the FAA to get clearances to the towers for departures Tuesday. Delta Air Lines Inc., which has its main hub in Atlanta, said flights were processing for takeoff, but slowly.
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(The Associated Press contributed to this report)
