FAA computer glitches causing significant flight delays
By Nilay Patel 
posted August 26th 2008 4:47PM
posted August 26th 2008 4:47PM
Update: All better now. Too bad air travel is still generally a dismal nightmare.
posted August 26th 2008 4:47PM
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I remember when flying used to be fun. TSA ruined that shit.
Atlanta is experiencing some nasty storms/tornadoes at the moment. I just heard my first official "live" tornado siren a half hour ago.
Hopefully, they have all those flight plans backed up on a TRS-80 (based on the picture, that would seem appropriate).
I think that it was someone crashing into couple towers somewhere in the USA.
I hate TSA as much as the next guy but I don't think they have anything to do with these delays.....
@avester
Yeah, TSA will stop that from happening again. I lost count of how many Rhodes scholars they had at the last checkpoint.
TSA=Thousands Standing Around
In five years the average flyer will not be permitted to take luggage - or clothes, on flights. Once you arrive at the airport, you will have to strip naked under the watchful eye of TSA personel, have a cavity search, and then step into a cardboard box which will be filled with packing peanuts and sealed up. You will have to pay $100 for the TSA approved box and peanuts. If you want a snorkel, you will be charged $325. Once you are sealed up, you will be placed on the luggage (now passenger) conveyor to be stacked in the airplane You will be routed through up to three different cities and sorted during your flight as a security precaution. You will not be told which cities as that could be a sercurity risk, but you will have to pay a 9-11 security fee for each city up to an additional $195 (excluding your departure and destination city) to fund the additional TSA security personal that will, of course, be needed. Once you have arrived at your final destination and have arrived at (the baggage claim carosel) passenger drop-off, a loud speaker announcement will instuct you how to break yourself out of your box. Your clothes can be mailed seperately to your destination if they can fit into a quart sized zip lock bag for an additional fee of $275. No metal, liquids, plastics, hemp, paper, or rayon will be permitted to be shipped. You could also choose to buy clothes at your destination airport in the TSA approved gift shop (everything comes with the I [heart] TSA logo) for $1100. The later will be a popular option since the mailed clothes take a minmum of 3 weeks to reach your destination - or apporximately 1 week after you arrive.
Fist class, of course, will remain unchanged. Movie stars and Senators can't be expected to be stuffed into a box.
no wonder it's having problems...just look how old it is
/sarcasm
Not far from the truth. The machines used for the FAA NADIN system were built in 1980, and are still being used...
Upgrading working hardware from the 80's to the modern ones, just to get to know mister Bluescreen and ms. Kernel Panic.
Thanks for that "/sarcasm" reminder. Though I'll admit, I've had someone reply something really ignorant to me that might necessitate a reminder like that.
Also, I'm really glad this is happening today because I just flew home from Chicago to Denver yesterday. I considered getting a hot dog and asking for ketchup on it, just to piss off some Chicago hot dog snob, but I wanted the Chipotle-rip off instead.
Just thought I'd mention all that. :-)
it's widely claimed that parts of sky traffic control systems have program cores from the 60s running in emulators which in turn again run in emulators on machines from the 80s.
Don't know if it's true but I certainly believe that no IT-Contractor would take the risk of such a software project. Imagine the cost after several days of downtime or the occasional "lost plane".
Harris Corporation has (had?) an air traffic control system in LA that broke down a few years ago because a flaw in Windows required that it be rebooted every 49 days. Instead of a sensible solution, Harris' solution was a *manual* reboot every 30 days. Someone forgot once and the whole system went down.
Actually, that picture isn't far from the truth. I was taking a course at the FAA MMAC in Oklahoma City about 10 years ago, and got to take a tour of the Air Traffic Control tower which included their computer room. The main computer for the RADAR system was a 60's era UNIVAC computer, but they had made an upgrade at one point: it recorded all the RADAR information for a week on a 10 MB hard drive with removable platters. The drive was the size of a dishwasher.
I have heard from pilots and people working in the FAA that many control towers still rely on vacuum tube base computers that pre-date the birth of most of the people reading or writing this blog.
Does that mean a single plane flying into their building in Atlanta would stop all flights? I smell a distinct lack of security.
You know, that is a very good point.
That's what happens when you replace the tried, true, and reliable systems with garbage Windows machines......
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/21/2120203
http://www.harris.com/view_pressrelease.asp?act=lookup&pr_id=77
Seriously. Windows is geared toward being capable to run different programs and multitask. Computers that only do one specific task, constantly, don't need an OS like windows.
Doesn't anyone pay attention to reliability calculations? Ex: a car without ANY options (a/c, power windows, radio) is less likely to fail than one with options. Simply, there are less parts to fail.
Haha! I am talking to someone on IRC who just said that their flight was delayed. He also says that there is a lady who has been talking about sweatpants for ten minutes on her phone. Yes, I sent him a link for a cell jammer.
Cell jammer....can u plz send it to me or a download link PLEASE ! :P
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.13233
Don't be a bad boy!
@ ben
Thanks, again ! :)
I just figured it was John Cusak and Billy Bob Thornton fighting all the time.
i wonder if it has any relation to Verizon being down in California?
Actually a communications problem between Denver and Atlanta... Now Atlanta is having to handle the full load.
i had a programmer friend was, crying "there is a plane missing, i have to find it" only to find out later that the database she was maintaining is short of 1 airplane, and she had to find out what happened to the data.
I hate the world "glitch" so much.
well we fixed the glitch, so you won't be receiving a paycheck anymore
bug /'bag'/ n : The son of a glitch.
That a great picture. where can I see more pics like that?
Try Redmond
"should" ???
Literally Epic Fail.
ORLY?
did FAA put on plate mail and carry swords on an epic quest to slay trolls and fail?
hmmm. that computer looks just like mine, my computer is running windows 1.0
The computers they run are so old I'm not even sure than they run DOS.
Well seriously you want critical computers to run MS-DOS or Windows? I'd expect custom software/OS or unix or bsd etcetera, not windows.
And if you run assembler on a an 8-bit CPU it can still give the best hardware available with the latest windows installed a run for its money I bet.
Are you sure that the FAA is still using a [ Digital Equipment Corporation VAX/VMS 11/780 ] as depicted in the picture?
yes it appears their HP3000 is down and they had to move on to "legacy" equipment.
he he and of course he.
Well, how did we handle all these flights before computers?
there weren't that many flights ;)
yeah, there were only three flights a month and the most you had to do was keep track of all the mod airlines, PSA, Eastern and TWA...
And it was all done with an abacus and a roomful of surplus NASA chimps.
:)
ho ho and as well, ho.
re: vax 780...I worked on those computers!
There was a VAX 11/780 that was use by a private rail line in Europe that ran non-stop for sixteen (16) years to control their track switching. Not bad for an old guy.
My university and all its students used them in late 80's when I did my degree. A classroom full of VT220 terminals connected to one of these is where you'd do your computer-related assignments. There was an old PDP11 with ferrite memory with its guts open in that room too, just for effect. Ah, those were the days. If anything went wrong - not often, thankfully - you'd wait for about an hour for the VAX to boot.
My dad was an old systems analyst and he sent me an email about some problem he had with his pc. Said he had to "IPL" it to clear the problem. I got a chuckle out of that. I can't laugh too much though since I was a computer operator on Burroughs an Unisys mainframes for my first 4 years in the Air Force.
We can't afford reliability, but we can afford to rebuild a country in the middle of a desert for a group of thankless people. Go figure!!
Not to worry, nothing will be rebuild.
With computer like those I am suprised someone hasn't hacked them and started flying planes into buildings. Oh wait no one has software old enogh to hack a computer that old.
T housands S tanding A round as we airline employees call them..