Computer Glitch Causes Flight Delays
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Flights were delayed in the New York area for up to two hours because of a computer glitch in the air traffic control center, the government said yesterday. At 2:15 p.m., the host computer for New York Center on Long Island started having problems, so the Federal Aviation Administration went to the backup system at 2:38, an agency spokeswoman, Laura Brown, said. The controllers lost its radar data and had to redo all their work, the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association local at the New York Center, Julio Henriques, said.
The glitch forced a halt to departing flights from Newark Liberty, La Guardia, and Teterboro airports for 28 minutes, an FAA spokesman, Jim Peters, said.
As far west as Chicago, planes scheduled to fly into New York’s air space were grounded temporarily, Ms. Brown said. As a safety precaution, planes were separated by 15 miles rather than the usual five, she said.
The system was back to fairly normal operations, with a backlog, at about 5 p.m., she said.
