Not a TGIF Day for the Airlines

Last Friday had some weather coming later in the day but, early in the day, all the chaotic delays were man-made and self-induced by the FAA's computer flight-planning network. Just as with the airlines' tendency to keep all "delay" info classified, the FAA kept close to its chest the "reasons why". People (and passengers) were assuming that it may have had something to do with extra security precautions per the UK-based liquid explosives fiasco or the recently announced terror-cell's plan to blow up JFK's fuel pipelines. Very slowly the word filtered out that it was the ATC system's computer network that had failed in a tumultuous cascade that was affecting the whole US Eastern seaboard. All the automated flight-plan entries that were in the data-base had become scrambled and each flight-plan, item by line item, had to be manually re-entered. This artificially injected flight delays of up to four hours throughout the day on what is usually the busiest day of the week. JFK was hard hit but the situation at LaGuardia was reputedly worse. When the question was inevitably asked about "back-up and redundancy", no answer was forthcoming. It would appear, prima facie, that the FAA has made no such provision in that critical scheduling network. New York Senator Charles Schumer said Friday's problems are a sign the FAA needs to stop "raising the bar" and should instead "unfumble the ball" on Air Traffic Control.