Air-Traffic-Glitch Control?

By Sally B. Donnelly/Washington

A computer software failure in a Federal Aviation Administration air-traffic-control center near Los Angeles last week delayed hundreds of flights in the West, canceled dozens more and left thousands of passengers fuming.

Inside the center, it was even worse. "The whole world fell apart," said an FAA employee on duty. First, the system started rebooting, distorting the critical information the radars displayed. When no quick fix could be found, the controllers who direct the almost 7,000 flights a day that flow through the airspace were switched to the emergency system. Some of them were not up to speed on that version, though, and they became confused and started yelling, "The backup system isn't working!" The problem was caused by what an agency spokesman called a glitch in the software--installed just that morning--although, he added, safety was never compromised.

Sources tell TIME, however, that even the FAA's technical specialists have doubts about the new software. They are concerned that the system has not been adequately tested and say there have been problems with it more than half the time in the 17 centers across the country where it is in use. The morning after the failure at the Los Angeles center, FAA techies warned employees that the center in Albuquerque was vulnerable to a similar software anomaly and that the installation at the Miami facility would be postponed.

--By Sally B. Donnelly/Washington