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UPDATE:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10027667-92.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

August 27, 2008 5:55 PM PDT
“After flight delays, FAA may add backup system”
Posted by Stefanie Olsen

ARTICLE SNIPPET: “In the wake of a computer failure that caused delays for 646 U.S. flights on Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration plans to upgrade its decades-old technology for flight-plan processing and potentially add a third backup system.

The FAA’s central system in Atlanta for handling all U.S. flight plans went down Tuesday because of a corrupted file, according to a FAA representative. Then, when the administration’s secondary and lone backup system in Salt Lake City got bogged down with repeated re-entries of flight plans from the airlines, the malfunction caused major delays at airports in Atlanta, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

By Tuesday evening, the flight delays were under control, but the computer system in Atlanta wasn’t functional until about 1:30 a.m. EST on Wednesday, officials said.

Now, FAA representatives said that by September, it plans to add more computer memory to its data communications network known as National Data Interchange Network (NADIN). And by early next year, the FAA plans to completely upgrade the decades-old data communication network with new hardware and software.

“The big difference is that (the new system) has a lot more memory, so what happened yesterday could never happen again,” said FAA spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere.”

http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/47032-1.html

GCN Home > 08/27/08 web stories

“Cause of FAA computer glitch still not determined”
By Patrick Marshall

ARTICLE SNIPPET: “According to FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto, the failure of the National Airspace Data Interchange Network (NADIN) at an FAA facility in Atlanta primarily affected flight departures east of the Mississippi and resulted in delays of 45 to 90 minutes while pilots waited for flight plans to be cleared by a system in Salt Lake City. That system usually handles aircraft departing from airports west of the Mississippi.

“Something was corrupted in a file that brought the whole system down,” Takemoto said. “We’re trying to figure out precisely what went wrong.””