Exclusive: Air traffic system failure caused by computer memory shortage
(Reuters) - A common design problem in the U.S. air traffic control system made it possible for a U-2 spy plane to spark a computer glitch that recently grounded or delayed hundreds of Los Angeles area flights, according to an inside account and security experts.
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As aircraft flew through the region, the $2.4 billion system made by Lockheed Martin Corp, cycled off and on trying to fix the error, triggered by a lack of altitude information in the U-2's flight plan, according to the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the incident.
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FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the computer had to examine a large number of air routes to "de-conflict the aircraft with lower-altitude flights".
She said that process "used a large amount of available memory and interrupted the computer's other flight-processing functions".
The FAA later set the system to require altitudes for every flight plan and added memory to the system, which should prevent such problems in the future, Brown said.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/12/us-airtraffic-bug-exclusive-idUSBREA4B02320140512
= new reply since forum marked as read
That's all any computer should ever need.
