Rogue FAA Computer creates a Higgledy Piggledy Traffic Pattern

One of the Federal Aviation Administration's newest air traffic radar computers went haywire on Monday morning, sending airplanes on detours over hundreds of miles, putting two into holding patterns over the ocean near Bermuda and finally forcing controllers to hold airliners on the ground. The satellite-based system is supposed to suck up transponder data on oceanic airplanes, transiting over water and well outside the limited horizons of land-based radar-heads. Ideally it should allow aircraft lateral and longitudinal spacing to be reduced and thus enhance the flow of traffic. That was the conceptual idea anyway.

Two airlines had aircraft outbound for Europe put into a holding pattern for 15 minutes while 27 airplanes were diverted into Canadian airspace and 10 were told to stay put on the ground. The bedlam started at around one o'clock in the morning when "HAL" started figuring that there were too many airplanes closing in on him and started sending them all to distant air traffic sin-bins. According to air traffic controllers, minor versions of the same flaw had been seen previously and could be corrected by deleting a nuisance airplane from the system and later sneaking it back in. This time Hal needed his plug pulled, screen cleaned and a quick reboot. Behavioral IT psychologists will be analyzing the system's software for any unresolved Oedipal complexes.