As Federal Aviation Administration officials Friday tried to determine what caused a mainframe computer malfunction that left about 75 air-traffic controllers scrambling to keep 340 airplanes safely separated Wednesday evening, controllers said only luck prevented a potential catastrophe.
When the mainframe computer crashed at 6:52 p.m. (EDT), a backup computer, known as DARC, kicked in at the Boston Center, which handles most flights in New England and New York state.
Even though controllers worked frantically to restore vital information on their radar screens when the backup came on, parts of it almost did not come on at all.
The Boston Globe reported that technicians who repair the system had asked FAA managers on Wednesday to let them conduct training on the DARC system. The managers refused. When technicians asked again, the managers said they could use the system at 7 p.m.
“They sent out a message saying that DARC would be released to maintenance at (7 p.m.),” said William Johannes, local president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. “Had this failure occurred eight minutes later . . . there would not even have been blips on the radar screens. It would have been like looking at a TV with the power off.”
However, FAA spokesman Jim Peters emphasized that even if DARC had been down for repairs, it could have been activated quickly.
DARC “is never unavailable for coverage and I cannot stress that enough,” Peters said.
