ATLANTA — A glitch at one of two centers that handle flight plans for the nation’s air-travel system set off delays and cancellations around the country Thursday morning.
The snarl — traced to something as simple as a single circuit board — prompted calls for more money and manpower at the Federal Aviation Administration.
The circuit board, at an FAA center in Salt Lake City, is part of a multibillion-dollar nationwide communications network that the agency has spent years installing as part of air- traffic-control modernization plans.
The problem began about 3 a.m., prompting cancellation or delay of hundreds of flights, primarily at airports in the Northeast and Atlanta and throughout the South.
The glitch was fixed four hours later. Scattered delays continued all day. Planes in flight were not in danger.
Lawmakers in Washington pounced. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the country’s aviation system is “in shambles” and that the FAA needs more resources to prevent similar problems in the future.
“If we don’t deliver the resources, manpower and technology (to) the FAA it needs to upgrade the system, these technical glitches that cause cascading delays and chaos across the country are going to become a very regular occurrence,” Schumer said.
Chairmen of the Senate and House aviation panels announced investigations.
The FAA said it has a team of technical and safety experts already investigating the outage, and FAA Administrator Randy Babbit will meet with officials from Harris Corp., the company that manages the system, to discuss how to prevent similar outages in the future.
Airlines were tallying losses from the glitch.
The Air Transport Association, an airline trade group, could not give an estimate.
Denver Post staff writer Ann Schrader contributed to this report
FAA glitch had little impact on DIA
There was “minimal impact” at Denver International Airport, said spokesman Chuck Cannon.
Frontier Airlines, which has its hub at DIA, reported six flights were delayed up to 30 minutes.
Southwest Airlines, DIA’s third- largest carrier, had four Denver departures delayed an average of 22 minutes. About 80 of Southwest’s 340 flights nationally were delayed.
