Glitch Snarls Air Traffic In Latest Woes For FAA

Air traffic controllers were forced to type in complicated flight plans themselves because they could not be transferred automatically from computers in one region of the country to computers in another, slowing down the whole system.

The equipment that failed was part of a telecommunication network owned and operated by FAA contractor Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Fla.

The FAA is investigating the cause of the failure and why a backup didn't immediately resolve the problem, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said.

Harris said in a statement that it is working with FAA to resolve the issue.

The union that represents the computer technicians that work for FAA said that the network is maintained by Harris, which didn't have its own technician on site when the equipment failed.

Tom Brantley, national president of Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, said Harris initially tried to troubleshoot the problem long distance without sending a technician to the FAA center in Salt Lake. When that didn't work, a technician was dispatched, Brantley said in a statement, but the delay extended the outage.

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Lowy reported from Washington; Associated Press Writers Marcus Franklin in New York, David Koenig in Dallas, Joshua Freed in Minneapolis, Johnny Clark and Dionne Walker in Atlanta, Laurie Kellman in Washington and Matt Barakat in Chantilly, Va., contributed to this report.

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