Computer blamed for air traffic problem

Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004 | 10:46 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

The Federal Aviation Administration blamed computer problems for a loss of radio communication between air traffic controllers and planes that halted air traffic for three hours Tuesday.

But FAA investigators denied allegations by the air traffic controllers union that there were several near misses between aircraft during the outage.

Radio contact failed about 4:40 p.m. Tuesday at the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale, Calif., north of Los Angeles. The station, in the desert north of Los Angeles, controls airspace for a vast region that encompasses California, Arizona, Nevada and parts of Utah.

The failure temporarily shut down flights at McCarran International Airport, Los Angeles and San Diego. At McCarran all flights were grounded between 5 p.m. and 7:45 p.m., but an airport spokeswoman had not been able to get a count of how many flights were delayed.

Failure at the Palmdale radar installation, which cut radio contact between pilots and air traffic controllers, was automatically triggered when a routine 30-day maintenance check was not completed, FAA spokesman William Shumann said. The system shuts down if the check is not administered, he said.

Also, a backup system "wasn't configured properly," and did not turn on in response to the system failure, Shumann said.

The FAA is "aggressively" investigating the failures, but it is not yet clear exactly who or how many FAA staffers are to blame, Shumann said.

In the future, the system will be set so that it will not go off just because a routine maintenance check is not completed, he said.