System Monitoring Air Traffic Over Pacific Goes Out for 16 Hours

An airtraffic control system monitoring hundreds of planes over 18 million miles of airspace over the Pacific Ocean broke down for 16 hours, federal aviation officials said Thursday.

No major problems were reported, although about 500 planes were affected, many of them 747 jumbo jets flying from the Pacific Coast to Hawaii and the Far East.

“Was there any real danger that two planes would collide? No. Was there an increase in the potential for danger? Yes,” said Mike Ballard, president of the Oakland chapter of the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn.

Because the area involved was so large--about one-tenth of the Earth’s surface--the chance of a catastrophe was relatively remote, he said.

The video display system broke down Wednesday about 7 p.m. while officials were testing new software, according to Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Tim Pyle.

Pyle also said there was no real danger from the outage. The system was repaired by 11 a.m. Thursday.

“The [system] really does not impact the ability of the controllers to separate aircraft over the ocean,” Pyle said. “It definitely makes the work more cumbersome, but it’s not like some other kind of outage where you’re not able to see airplanes.”

Traffic controllers started using their old method of monitoring aircraft, writing down by hand the aircraft’s flight number, speed, altitude and route.

The new computer system, called the interim situation display system, gives air traffic controllers at the Oakland Air Route Traffic Control Center in Fremont a visual display of aircraft.

The computer system was installed about three years ago. It became mandatory after the FAA lost track of two 747s over the Pacific several years ago.

Pyle said the FAA is upgrading its technology and that the reliability rate of its equipment is nearly flawless.

Ballard blamed the outage on the FAA, criticizing officials for taking too long to update equipment and a lack of stable management.

“It’s another example of the FAA’s failure to modernize in a timely manner, which is leaving the public at risk,” Ballard said. “Granted, we’ve had the best safety record in the world, but there’s technology out there where we could be providing even better service.”