Router Issues Caused Last Week's Delays

Though delays of 45 to 80 minutes are fairly routine in the airline industry, the cause of last Thursday's glitch should be familiar to anyone with an Internet connection. A malfunctioning router in Salt Lake City at 5 a.m. caused misinformation within the ATC system related to flight plans and weather. The system slowdown was based on adjusting controllers' workloads. FAA officials point to the fundamental nature of the outage as further evidence that the ATC information system needs an overhaul. Those of us who have called a helpline and been instructed to "unplug the router for one minute" can relate.