FRANK SESNO, CNN ANCHOR: A computer problem snarled air traffic over the mid-Atlantic, earlier today. Dozens of flights were canceled or delayed. The FAA is saying that at this point it appears the problem was not linked to Y2K. CNN's Carl Rochelle is following the story from Washington's Ronald Reagan National Airport -- Carl</s>CARL ROCHELLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Frank, they say not Y2K, but it was a computer glitch. It was a device called a peripheral, and it was is a device that is used to put the flight plans that these airliners use into the main computer. There was a glitch there, some sort of breakdown that overloaded the main computer, and they had to switch to a backup system, and that meant delays all the way from Boston south to Raleigh, North Carolina, Philadelphia, New York, the Washington airport, all of the airports in the area, the Reagan National Airport, the Dulles International Airport and Baltimore- Washington International Airport, as wells a JFK in New York and Laguardia. All of those airports just backed up. Traffic was running at least 45 minutes behind. At 9:49, this morning, they lifted the ground stop; that means they let planes go back up in the system again and tried to make some headway. But for a number of people, it was a very poor end to a frustrating morning.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are trying to go on an 8:00 flight to Laguardia for a business meeting, and the pilot announced that there were computer glitches, and we just sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half before we just went back to the terminal.</s>ROCHELLE: Now, the FAA is trying to make up for the backup operations by moving flights along. There were a number of flights that were canceled, probably won't be made up, but there is stacking up, because the planes trying to move from one area to the other, and that probably will last well into the afternoon before things get all the way back to normal.
Computer Glitch Snarls Air Traffic on East Coast