Posted on 05/03/2014 1:15:20 PM PDT by george76
On Wednesday at about 2 p.m., according to sources, a U-2 spy plane, the same type of aircraft that flew high-altitude spy missions over Russia 50 years ago, passed through the airspace monitored by the L.A. Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale, Calif. The L.A. Center handles landings and departures at the region’s major airports, including Los Angeles International (LAX), San Diego and Las Vegas.
The computers at the L.A. Center are programmed to keep commercial airliners and other aircraft from colliding with each other. The U-2 was flying at 60,000 feet, but the computers were attempting to keep it from colliding with planes that were actually miles beneath it.
Though the exact technical causes are not known, the spy plane’s altitude and route apparently overloaded a computer system called ERAM, which generates display data for air-traffic controllers. Back-up computer systems also failed.
As a result, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had to stop accepting flights into airspace managed by the L.A. Center, issuing a nationwide ground stop that lasted for about an hour and affected thousands of passengers.
...
There were also delays at the airports in Burbank, Long Beach, Ontario and Orange County and at other airports across the Southwestern U.S.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Did he find what he was looking for?
It lasted a decade.
I withdraw my objection.
So how were you able to sneak into my house and fix my oven, my microwave and my alarm clock without being shot......Hmmmmmmmm?
......VCRs.....
Video Control Robots........I knew it!
No wonder I couldn't figure out how to record television programs.......
Unless he married Sheryl Crow :)
The U2 is operating above 60,000 which is the ceiling of controlled airspace, and is responsible for his separation from others above FL600, which are very rare.
Well, that's partly right, your uncle WAS telling a 'story'.
I worked many SR refueling missions, primarily just south of the Gulf routes between Nawlins & St Pete. I would be working the tanker, usually around FL310, with an AR mission scheduled. Right on time, every time, the Blackbird would suddenly appear about 100 miles behind the tanker leaving FL600 descending. All comms were with the tanker, never the 'bird.
After tanking, he would descend to about FL290, accelerate past the tanker, climb RAPIDLY to FL600 and disappear....POOF.
In other words, these operations are all conducted on ALTRV (Altitude Reservations), tightly timed, with NO transponder above FL600. We knew they were around, because of the ALTRV, but NEVER were able to see them above FL600.
While many NASA U-2 and WB-57 flights are not on ALTRV's, their transponders remain on above FL600, but do not display mode C.
In the days before computerized ATC radar, we had the capability to see, and manually track, Aspen flights, but we had no Mode C capability, and no way to compute groundspeed except with a 'wheel'.
And another posting related the story of an Aspen flight asking ATC for a 'groundspeed check' to show off on the frequency. Again, a 'story', 'cuz we did not track them actively, hence no groundspeed display (below FL600).
Sorry to ramble on like that.
Parts of the FAA system were still using x86 technology well into the ‘90s, when the company I worked for was called on to repair them. Parts were a nightmare and could take WEEKS to get, IF they could be found at all. I am sure they upgraded to at least ‘90s technology by the end of the first decade of the current century!
I was on TRIPLE overtime, waiting for it. My company at the time was worldwide, so that was a pretty big hit in the wallet!
I absolutely love that story.
Thanks for sharing it.
Hey, don't blame me if the media overhyped the issue or that some people were suckered into believing the hype.
Earlier media reports indicated that the U-2 may have caused the computers to fail while they were tracking the aircraft, but the FAA determined the problem stemmed from the computers, not the plane.
“On April 30, 2014, an FAA air traffic system that processes flight plan information experienced problems while processing a flight plan filed for a U-2 aircraft that operates at very high altitudes under visual flight rules,” a statement released Tuesday says. “The computer system interpreted the flight as a more typical low altitude operation, and began processing it for a route below 10,000 feet. The extensive number of routings that would have been required to de-conflict the aircraft with lower-altitude flights used a large amount of available memory and interrupted the computer’s other flight-processing functions.”
The FAA fixed the problem within an hour and then enabled its facilities to increase the amount of flight- processing memory available to make sure the issue does not happen again, the statement says.
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