FAA: Cause of flight delays has been cleared up

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By Katherine Ullmer and John Nolan
Staff Writers Updated 3:42 PM Thursday, November 19, 2009

DAYTON — A software problem within the Federal Aviation Administration’s system prompted flight delays at Dayton International Airport and across the nation Thursday, Nov. 19.

The problem was cleared up by about 9 a.m., but some flight delays or cancellations later in the day were still possible, the FAA said. Air traffic control radar and communication with aircraft were not affected, the agency said.

Federal aviation officials attributed the 5 a.m. failure to a software configuration problem within the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure in Salt Lake City. As a result, FAA services used primarily for traffic flow and flight planning were unavailable electronically.

“During the outage, air traffic controllers managed flight plan data manually and safely, according to FAA contingency plans,” the agency said in a prepared statement. “There is no indication the outage occurred as a result of a cyber attack.”

The system is used by pilots to file flight plans. Without access to the computer system, pilots had to call the air traffic control towers, said Linda Hughes, spokeswoman for Dayton International Airport.

The agency is investigating. FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt was meeting with representatives of Harris Corp., the company that manages the system, to discuss ways of preventing a reoccurrence.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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