FAA Raises Concern About Flight Delay

 The Federal Aviation Administration, FAA has raised concern to flight delays, viewing a recent software upgrade implemented at the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center (ZDC) in Leesburg, Va., as the possible source of computer automation problems that prompted the delay or cancellation of hundreds of flights on Saturday, Aug. 15. While the automation problem originated at ZDC, the issue created a ripple effect throughout the National Airspace System (NAS), disrupting flights until the automation system came back online that afternoon.

Image of diverted flight paths during yesterday’s ATC computer glitch at ZDC. Photo: FlightRadar24
According to a statement released on the agency's Facebook page, preliminary information about flight activity resulting from the incident indicated that the automation problem caused 492 related delays and 476 cancellations.

"The FAA reduced the arrival and departure rates in the area from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. for safety reasons. That resulted in about 70 percent of the average normal Saturday traffic at [Baltimore Washington International Airport] BWI, 72 percent at [Reagan National Airport] DCA, and 88 percent at [Dulles International Airport] IAD. The FAA is continuing to diagnose the cause of yesterday's problem, and has not seen a reoccurrence of the original issues," the agency said.

The two major airports serving the Washington D.C. region, Reagan National and Dulles International, were particularly impacted by the automation problem. Airports serving the New York area also suffered major delays. Flights with routes that normally traverse the Washington D.C. region airspace, such as JetBlue 927 between Newark and Orlando, were re-routed out over the Atlantic Ocean and other areas, according to live air traffic radar tracking data from FlightRadar24, an Internet-based flight tracking application.

A representative for American Airlines, the carrier with the largest presence at Reagan National, said an estimated 40 percent of their flights were cancelled or delayed on Saturday.

"FAA instituted a low-altitude flight plan for flights under 10,000 feet so we had significant delays and/or cancellations at Regan International and Dulles International airports," Kimberly Gibbs, a spokesperson for Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) told Avionics Magazine. "As the afternoon progressed, their system was able to come back online and airlines worked with FAA to recoup those delays and cancelled flights. On Sunday we had a pretty busy travel day but normal operations at both of our airports, and as of today operations still remain normal."

The Washington Air Traffic Control (ATC) center in Leesburg, Va. is among the 24 air traffic facilities within the NAS tasked with managing high altitude aircraft, or those flying above 20,000 feet. Below that altitude, traffic is managed by controllers located at Terminal Radar Approach Control Facilities (TRACONS), none of which in the Washington D.C. area were impacted by the automation problem confined to ZDC.

While the FAA is still determining the root cause of the problem, its latest statement on the issue says there is "no indication that the problem is related to any inherent problems with the En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) system." ERAM, which was contracted in 1990 to replace the agency’s antiquated Host system, has finally taken over at all 20 ATC centers in the United States, enabling many of the NextGen air traffic modernization initiatives that the FAA is currently working to put in place.

The FAA held a press conference at Reagan National Airport in May to discuss the nationwide switch to the new automation platform. ERAM processes data from 64 radars, compared with 24 for Host, and can track up to 1,900 aircraft at a time compared to 1,100 for Host, according to the FAA's updated NextGen Implementation Plan published in May 2015.

The FAA states that ERAM has had a "greater than 99.99 availability rate since it was completed nationwide earlier this year."