Posted on 08/18/2003 9:57:24 AM PDT by LurkedLongEnough
(1010 WINS) (NEW YORK) A 30-second power failure at the Federal Aviation Administration's air traffic control center on Long Island disrupted flights in the area for about 30 minutes Sunday afternoon, authorities said.
At 3:08 p.m., the power conditioning system, which supplies power to the computers at the New York Terminal Approach Control Center, broke down, FAA spokeswoman Arlene Salac said.
Air traffic controllers, who monitor flights in and out of the region's three major airports, temporarily lost radar contact but not voice communication with aircraft, she said.
After 30 to 45 seconds, a backup power conditioning system took over, she said.
Controllers then cleared departing flights to leave the airspace and held incoming flights until the computer system was restored.
The reboot took five minutes, Salac said. The airspace returned to normal about 3:40 p.m.
A couple of hundred flights headed in and out of LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy International and Newark (N.J.) Liberty International airports were delayed for about 30 minutes.
The cause of the failure was under investigation but was not believed to be related to Thursday's blackout, Salac said. During the outage, the center operated on backup generators.
The latest glitch caused "minimal" flight delays, said Tony Ciavolella, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airports.
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