Thousands of East Coast air travelers from Boston to North Carolina ran into departure delays on Thursday because a key government computer failed for more than three hours, officials said. Officials at the Federal Aviation Administration, owner of the stricken computer, were quick to reassure travelers that the glitch did not appear to be related to the Y2K bug. The problem caused departure delays at Boston’s Logan airport, the three New York area airports and Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, Philadelphia, the three Washington area airports and Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina, an FAA spokeswoman said. The problem Thursday was caused by the failure of the main computer at the FAA’s Washington Center at Leesburg, Virginia. The Washington Center coordinates flights from Richmond, Va., north to New York and west to West Virginia.
