(Somebody had to post this...)
Posted on 08/15/2015 11:11:30 AM PDT by Whenifhow
Officials reported big delays Saturday at New York and Washington airports because of an air traffic control issue.
Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport reported that a computer outage was limiting flight arrivals and departures there as well as Washington's Reagan National Airport and Dulles International Airport.
The problem also affected flights leaving New York’s LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports, according to FlightAware’s online tracker. By 12:30 p.m. departure delays were at 1 hour and expected to grow, PIX11 News reported.
Delays out of Newark International Airport were at 30 minutes and decreasing at that particular time, the station said, according to FlightAware.
The FAA blamed an automation problem at an air traffic center in Leesburg, in suburban Virginia.
“Some flights into and out of the New York and Washington, DC metro area airports area may be delayed,” FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said. “We are directing high altitude traffic around the affected airspace.”
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
http://abcnews.go.com/US/air-traffic-center-problem-delays-flights-northeast-faa/story?id=33104898
Airports in the Northeast experiencing delays include Boston; Newark, New Jersey; John F. Kennedy, New York; Teterboro, New Jersey; Laguardia, New York; Philadelphia; Washington Dulles; Ronald Reagan Washington and Baltimore-Washington, according to the FAA website.
can’t be weather related...
Global warming
Im working in dispatch right now. It is a nightmare..
We’re rerouting business jets around ZDC now. Can’t imagine an airline dispatch ops room. ATC zero’s no fun
what’s the problem?
Reading this reminds of the earlier reported ax-cutting of a communication cable in the northwest region of the U.S.
What if it were a willful act of finding ‘that’ buried cable, in ‘that’ remote location, where only the bears, deer and other wildlife are regular visitors, away from the eyes of security personnel?
This is too widespread an effect, and there has been ‘no squirrel’ responsible for a power outage, this time.
I thought a flight control problem meant things like ailerons, elevators, etc.
I thought a flight control problem meant things like ailerons, elevators, etc.
Reminds me of all the Chicago ATC re-routing that went on after that idiot set the control center equipment on fire.
No redundancy? no backup system?
(Somebody had to post this...)
Aside from holidays Monday mornings and Friday afternoons are supposedly the busiest air travel days for business travelers with Thursday afternoons and Sunday afternoons and some overlap in Friday afternoon for vacation travelers doing the long weekend thing.
But when I travelled to the UK in October nearly two years ago for work, I flew (or was supposed to fly) out of BWI and then making a connecting flight out of Philadelphia at 8:30 PM on a Saturday evening landing in Manchester in the AM UK time which was a good thing since I had a 3+ hour train trip to my final destination plus the Saturday evening flight was cheaper but it certainly wasn’t less crowed, it was completely full. But the BWI flight was delayed because the plane was late landing and something about a new flight crew not being available so any of us making an international connecting flight were shuttle bussed by the airline to Philly. Ug!
Our shuttle bus driver (actually it was a very large SUV) was named Mohammad and it took forever for him to leave BWI, why we were not sure since we were full, and he talked on his cell phone the entire time while driving like a maniac up I-95 and in the rain no less. There was a very nice older British man who I had been chatting with while we were waiting for the shuttle who was sitting in the front, and who I swear was Dick Cheney’s doppelganger, and after we finally got to Philly he told me that from best as he could tell, perhaps knowing a bit of Arabic, that Mohammad was on the phone with his bookie, making football (US football) bets. What nightmare that was. I got to the boarding gate literally in the nick of time to board. If it had been 5 minutes later I probably would have missed my flight.
It seemed to me however there were a lot of Saturday evening international business travelers on that shuttle bus with me, some on my flight to the UK and some making connecting flights to other European counties. And on the actual flight to Manchester there were a good number of Scottish families returning from vacations in the US as I learned from the woman sitting next to me, because their kids were off from school for their two week “half term break”.
I flew back on the following Thursday and it was very, very busy. I almost missed my connecting flight to BWI because of going through US customs and TSA, the lines were incredibly long and of course inefficient, and on the flight from Manchester to Philly, again there were quite a number of Scottish families starting vacations in the US. The woman I was sitting next (and such a nice woman) was traveling with her two daughters and were headed to FL - a few days at Disney and then going to Miami.
: ) I thought of posting that too but you beat me to it.
It was unpleasant there for awhile..
FAA: COMPUTER PROBLEM THAT SNARLED FLIGHTS IN NORTHEAST RESOLVED
http://abc7ny.com/news/faa-computer-problem-that-snarled-flights-in-northeast-resolved/932910/
The Federal Aviation Administration blamed the problem on “technical issues” at an air traffic control center in Leesburg, Va. Around 4 p.m., the agency said the problem had been resolved, and that officials were working to lift any remaining orders to hold planes on the ground.
Snip
The agency said in a statement that the snarl was the result of an “automation problem” at the Leesburg center. The center handles high-altitude air traffic for the affected region. The problem wasn’t believed to be caused by any accident or hacking.
Information posted online by the FAA indicated there was a problem with the En Route Automation Modernization computer system, also known as ERAM, at the Leesburg center.
The FAA finished installing the troubled computer system in the last of 20 high-altitude traffic control centers earlier this year. The completion was years behind schedule.
I was caught in this briefly this morning. A flight took off just moments before we did. We were almost ready to taxi and had to stop. But we ended up only being delayed about 15 minutes.
It's a mystery, I'm sure. The causes of these things just cannot be determined.
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