FAA computer crash snarls U.S. air traffic

Those of you with important business today that hinges on air travel in any way may want to look at rescheduling: Computer problems at the FAA have completely botched air traffic nationwide, causing hundreds -- potentially thousands -- of flight delays as well as cancellations.

The FAA reported that a key computer system went down at 5:06 am EST and took about five hours to get back up and running. At press time a cause for the crash has still not been found, other than something going wrong with "the main telecommunications systems."

The FAA adds that the safety of planes and passengers was never at risk during the outage, but rather that the problem prevented the automated entry of flight plans and subsequent routing of aircraft properly, forcing air traffic controllers to resort to slow, manual entry of flight plans, a process requiring the typing of hundreds of cryptic alphanumeric characters on a keyboard.

Airlines are dealing with the problem in various ways. American Airlines has delayed "virtually every" flight it has on the schedule, though most have a delay of less than an hour. On the other hand, AirTran canceled 22 flights this morning and delayed dozens more -- some with delays of six hours or more. Some airports seem to be faring with the outage better than others, but major delays at one airport invariably cause a ripple effect around the country, as incoming planes are late for redeployment.

The New York Times notes that the same system failed in August 2008, with similar results.