LINDA STOUFFER, CNN ANCHOR: It turns out high tech can be bad tech for the nation's air-traffic control centers. The FAA says it is suspending software upgrades to airports after a second round of delays caused by crashing computers. CNN's Greg Lefevre has details now of what has been behind the rash of traveler headaches.</s>GREG LEFEVRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After two major system failures in just five days, the FAA issued a nationwide moratorium on any more software upgrades in its air-traffic control systems. The software is supposed to tell air-traffic controllers about an aircraft's identity, altitude, speed and direction. Last Thursday, the software failed at the Los Angeles center, where certain lines of code refused to recognize some planes. In San Francisco, 86 flights were stalled on the ground Monday morning when similar software failed to start after an overnight test. The same system also failed in August.</s>RON WILSON, SFO SPOKESMAN: There will be no more software installation in the center's computers until further notice.</s>LEFEVRE: The FAA installed new high-speed computers at all of its air traffic centers last year. The software is updated periodically. The latest version contains patches designed to improve performance, correct previous problems, and update airline schedules. Things had been working.</s>WILSON: They want to find out why these two centers on the West Coast have had problems when there has been about a dozen centers with software upgrades throughout the United States without a glitch, but the two on the West Coast have created a problem in the last few days.</s>LEFEVRE: When the software fails, controllers move planes farther apart in the skies, that keeps some new flights from taking off, stranding thousands of travelers. The FAA says that it will dispatch technical needs to test the software to see if it was working elsewhere, why it failed here. Greg Lefevre, CNN, San Francisco.
FAA Suspends Software Upgrades to Airports After Second Round of Delays Caused by Crashing Computers