The FAA computer systems had a major glitch on Thursday. It lasted about 5 hours and impacted all flyers causing cancellation and massive delays.
Multiple Failures
Christopher Hinton of MarketWatch.com reported, “The National Airspace Data Interchange Network failed at both its locations — Atlanta and Salt Lake City, just after 5:15 a.m. Eastern Time, according to the FAA and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.”
NATCA Statement
“A ‘ripple effect’ is expected to impact the region’s flights throughout the day, NATCA said. Airports in the Northeast were heavily impacted, with Washington Dulles, Ronald Reagan National, Newark International, and New York’s JFK, reporting significant delays. Atlanta International, the world’s busiest airport, was also impacted.”
Delta Statement
“As a result of this morning’s FAA flight plan system outage, Delta is continuing to experience some delays and cancellations,” the world’s largest airline and Atlanta-based carrier said in a statement. “Operations are slowly returning to normal and we are working with impacted passengers.”
The obvious question: how do both systems fail at the same time?
That question actually raises another question: could this failure be the result of cyberwarriors? There’s been lots of recent discussion about other nation states ability and willingness to wage cyberwar against the US infrastructure. It’s hard to believe that both systems would fail at the same time. These are critical systems to our National infrastructure. Mobility and business suffered greatly during this 5 hour disruption. Just think how badly a multi-day outage would impact the US.
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