A Cold War era spyplane has recently caused a major incident over at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The U2 Dragon Lady spyplane caused flight control computers to malfunction delaying hundreds of flights.
LAX is one of the busiest airports in the US and any delay can cause a massive ripple effect that can take the airport a few days to a few weeks to remedy. Due to the passing of the U2 spyplane over the skies above LA last Wednesday, a computer glitch in the computers used by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to control, monitor and direct all commercial flights in the area led aviation authorities to stop a large number of planes from taking off all over the Southwestern area of the country.
Aside from the LAX, other airports such as Santa Ana's John Wayne Airport, Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport and Burbank's Bob Hope Airport were also affected by the incident. Due to the grounding order, flights from other parts of the US that were headed to the incident areas were also affected. In fact, every single aircraft passing through airspace controlled by the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center operated by the FAA were affected by the computer glitch in one way or another.
While the incident caused millions of dollars in delays, the FAA still hasn't released a statement providing all of the details of the problem. Moreover, US government defense officials have also kept mum about the situation.
"We aren't confirming anything beyond what we already said about it being a software issue that we corrected," said Lynn Lunsford, a spokeswoman from the FAA.
The U2 spyplane involved in the incident was flying over the affected area at a height of approximately 60,000 feet. However, the flight control computers used by the FAA kept trying to keep other planes from hitting the spyplane despite the fact that the commercial planes where flying at much lower altitudes. The spyplane's route and altitude may have caused problems with then Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) computer systems used by the FAA. This computer system is used to provide air traffic controllers with data about planes in the air. While the FAA does have backup systems in case the main computers somehow fail, the backup systems also experienced problems.
LAX representatives have stated that 212 flights from the international airport were delayed. Moreover, 27 flights were cancelled due to the computer glitch.
