forgottenliberty.com

Today, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) had a “computer glitch” that caused flight delays and cancellations nationwide.  This is the second time in about 15 months where the FAA has had computer problems causing major headaches for the airlines travelers. From cnn.com,

FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto said the system went out at 5:06 a.m. ET and came back on about five hours later. He said officials working to pinpoint the cause know that there was a problem with the main telecommunications systems.

“It was an efficiency problem rather than a safety problem, but it was a serious efficiency problem,” Takemoto said.

Due to the outage, air traffic controllers had to enter flight plans manually, a problem that causes delays, according to the FAA and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

The air traffic controllers’ group said the problem will cause flight delays throughout the day because of a “domino effect.”

“Air traffic controllers are without electronic decision-making tools and cannot keep up with the sheer numbers of flights — resulting in delays,” the controllers’ group said in a statement during the outage.

“Air traffic controllers on the ground at major airports are getting no automated flight plan information and have to enter that information manually, a cumbersome and time-consuming process

Those of you who know me personally know that I work for a major U.S. airline.  This means I see the inefficiencies of the FAA and the government run air traffic control (ATC) system on a daily basis.  Of course, because passengers never see the government employees in the ATC tower, they blame the airlines and the airline employees for problems like today.

The FAA and ATC computer systems are extremely outdated because it literally takes an act of Congress to upgrade them.  The GPS system in our cell phones and cars is a more sophisticated tracking system than what the ATC uses but again, it takes an act of Congress to upgrade.  Have you ever been in a plane that sat on the tarmac for hours waiting to take off?  Do you want to know why you had to sit their and miss your business meeting?  Here’s a hint…