Feds downplay ‘flypocalypse’

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is downplaying the impact of an air traffic control failure that resulted in thousands of flights in the Washington, D.C., area being delayed or canceled on Saturday.

The agency said it handled a majority of the flights that were scheduled to arrive or depart from the capital area, despite an hours-long ground stop that Twitter users labeled a “flypocalypse.” 

“Despite the outage, air traffic controllers safely handled 70 to 88 percent of Saturday’s scheduled arrivals and departures at the region’s three major airports by using backup systems and procedures,” the FAA said in a statement. “The availability rate of the En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) system has been higher than 99.99 percent since it was completed nationwide earlier this year.” 

{mosads}At issue is the failure of a highly touted piece of air traffic control equipment that is part of the Federal Aviation Administration’s move to a satellite-based airplane navigation system known as NextGen. 

The troubled system, known as En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM), is supposed to help air traffic controllers move more flights around some of the nation’s most congested airspaces, such as the Washington metropolitan area, which is home to three major airports. 

But a computer in Leesburg, Va., went out on Saturday morning and took hours to come back up, resulting in a ground stop at all three Washington-area airports that stranded thousands of passengers.

The FAA said it has “identified a recent software upgrade at the Leesburg, VA, high-altitude radar facility as the source of Saturday’s automation problems. 

“The agency is working closely with its contractor, Lockheed Martin Corp., to prevent future occurrences,” the agency said. 

According to the website FlightAware.com, there were 8,224 flight delays on Saturday and 888 cancellations as a result of the FAA’s computers problems in the Washington, D.C., area. Baltimore’s Thurgood Marshall International and Washington’s Reagan National airports were the most affected in the country, according to the site.

Lawmakers have begun calling for an investigation into the computer failure. 

“The FAA’s air-traffic control operations failed in our nation’s key transportation corridor, stranding tens-of-thousands of passengers with no explanation,” said Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), a former Transportation Committee chairman, in a statement. He promised to introduce legislation to require the FAA to provide better information about computer-related flight delays. 

“Thousands were left in the dark without information until more than four hours after the meltdown was solved,” Mica continued. “This type of air-traffic control failure cannot be permitted in the future, especially in our nation’s capital.

“The only saving grace was that this failure occurred on a Saturday,” he added.