BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: We've been talking for the past 30 minutes about flight delays on the East Coast of the U.S. Carl Rochelle now back live with us in Washington. Carl, that problem's been fixed, I understand. Is that right?</s>CARL ROCHELLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It has been fixed. It was fixed at a little after 9:00 this morning, about 9:45. They managed to get that -- 9:49 this morning is exactly when they fixed it, according to the FAA. Now, they told us that the computer system went down at 6:15 this morning. That center -- you're looking at a picture of the Reagan National Airport in Washington. The system that went down is not actually at an airport, it's out at Leesburg, the air traffic control center, and it was a problem between a peripheral device and the main host computer and it caused an overload in the computer and the FAA switched to a backup system. That backup system is causing departure delays at these airports, primarily: Boston, the three New York airports, the Washington area airports, Philadelphia and the airport at Raleigh Durham, North Carolina, Perhaps some en route traffic problems along the way. Now, they say that they fixed the problem and they are trying to sort out the backup delays. But as I told you a bit earlier, Bill, the delays are cause -- it's sort of like having a traffic accident on the freeway: It causes things to backup and sometimes it takes quite a while before that backup can be worked out. They're still saying apparently not Y2K-related. We were told very strongly the first time not Y2K-related. We're now told that they don't believe it was Y2K- related, but they believe it was a peripheral device. It certainly was a computer device went down at around 6:15 this morning, back up at 9:49, Bill, so things should get better, but my guess is that it will take a while.</s>HEMMER: OK, kind of like dominoes when that schedule gets knocked off track, you know, everything just gets backed up. Carl Rochelle live in Washington. Carl, thanks again to you.
Air Traffic Control Computer Problem Causes Flight Delays at East Coast Airports