Business & Tech

Flights Resume After Computer Glitch Causes Widespread Delays

Passengers going in and out of New York and D.C. will continue to experience delays as the system catches up.

Flights resumed operations after an automation problem at an air traffic control center in Leesburg, Virginia caused hours-long delays Saturday for those going in and out of New York City, Baltimore and Washington.

The issue was resolved just after 4 p.m., according to the FAA. Reports of the delays began coming in around 11 a.m. The agency is focusing on a recent software upgrade at the Virginia facility as the source of the automation problem.

“The upgrade was designed to provide additional tools for controllers. The FAA has disabled the new features while the agency and its system contractor completes their assessment,” the agency said in a statement. ”There is no indication that the problem is related to any inherent problems with the En Route Automation Modernization system, which has had a greater than 99.99 availability rate since it was completed nationwide earlier this year.”

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The issue impacted planes already in the air. High altitude traffic was directed around the affected airspace, according to the FAA. Authorities said the issue had nothing to do with an accident or hacking.


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Flights out of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport and BWI Marshall Airport resumed to depart but delays continued as the backlog cleared. The outage limited flights in and out of the three airports. Delays were also reported at New York’s La Guardia and John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Preliminary information from the FAA indicates there were 492 delays and 476 cancellations. This resulted in 70 percent of the average normal Saturday traffic at BWI, 72 percent at Reagan and 88 percent at Dulles.

As a result, passengers were encouraged to check flight status with their airlines.


American Airlines released a statement acknowledging the issue saying all of their East Coast flights were impacted. Southwest Airlines said its flights to and from D.C. area airports were affected.

Customers across the region reported being delayed due to the outage.





This is not the first time computer issues have led to flight delays.

In July, a network connectivity issue caused United flights across the world to be grounded causing widespread delays. The FAA described the problem as an automation issue. A similar problem affected some United flights in early June.

Patch has reached out to authorities for more information. Refresh this page for updates as they become available.

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