LAX closed due to computer issue ?
 

From twitter feed: Anyone with more info ?

Computer issue affecting ATC for high-altitude aircraft -

Flights already diverting to SFO and being held at other airports. Some aircraft still arriving - but no departures.

From the Twitter:

"ground halt" on all flights at the following airports: BOS, BWI, DCA, EWR, FLL, JFK, LAS, LAX, LGA, MCO, MIA, PHL, TEB

And just now...

UPDATE: FAA seems to have fixed the computer issues at the affected airports. Ground stops are being lifted.

sounds like the ''canned'' flight plans for all the airline flights could not be inputed directly computer to computer and one guy at one terminal had to do it by hand...hundreds of times.

I've seen this happen before...what a mess!

Seems the cause was caught on camera;

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmgJjKWCYAArSvL.jpg

U-2 spy plane responsible for LAX ATC glitch
 

NBC News - Breaking News & Top Stories - Latest World, US & Local News

U2 caused LAX computer shut down
 

So what did they do differently this month that they didn't do the preceding 49 years ?

Updated and "improved" their software perhaps?"

Sounds an unlikely story but at least the US authorities are blaming a US based entity rather the "foreign hacking"

same thing happened in England...same day.

Well, Bono could probably fry ATC if his voice was on the mike. :)

James May using his mobile, perhaps?

U2 is probably a cover story for a highly secretive x-plane out of Area 51.

YOU need to attribute your sources (not the 1st time you have been advised ), but in this instance can't because you are wrong.

It was immigration computers that were down in UK, so away with your hints at conspiracy or global failures.

Airport chaos after UK immigration computer failure | World news | theguardian.com

U2 brings ATC down
 

LOS ANGELES (CNN) –A very old spy plane and a very new computer system played pivotal roles in last week’s computer glitch that temporarily paralyzed flight operations in California, FAA officials said Monday.

The problem involved a U-2 aircraft, the type famed for conducting reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

A Federal Aviation Administration computer system interpreted the U-2′s flight path at a very high altitude as if it were flying in a much lower and more crowded airspace.

The computer — which anticipates the flight path and looks for possible conflicts such as other aircraft or restricted airspace — was overtaxed by the many flight changes the U-2 had plotted, officials said.

That work used much of the computer’s memory and interrupted its other flight-processing functions, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said in a statement.



Read more: U-2 spy plane blamed for computer glitch that grounded Calif. flights | Q13 FOX News
Read more at U-2 spy plane blamed for computer glitch that grounded Calif. flights | Q13 FOX News

That isn't the U-2's fault, is it? Looks like a software screw up on the ATC end. :confused:

I have a feeling that it isn't computer memory as such as truncating a flight level that was above what some software designer for the En-Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) system thought was possible. Imagine the chaos if the system had dropped a zero and called it 6000 feet. All those short term conflict alerts with the low altitude aircraft :eek:. STCAs are really really bad for controllers to get as they alert the supervisors that a controller has lost separation :=. And all the time the controller had nearly 9 miles vertical separation.

It will be interesting to find out what happened from someone who knows the ERAM software.

Sounds to me like what is known in computing circles as an "integer overflow". If you use a 16-bit integer to store altitude, you can only store values between 0 and 65535. After that it wraps back to zero again. So for example 90,000 feet would end up as 90000 - 65536 = 24464 feet. That could certainly cause a few problems.

Registration 80-1071
Alt 21500' (+0 fpm)
Flight no
Recd. at 140430 192707
ICAO id AE0954
Type U2

Looks like this could have been the chap.
He maxed out at 22,800 feet at around 1920 GMT loitered there for a short time then RTB...whole flight was just over an hour.
No climb to "above" FL600 as far as I can see.
The altitude reports during the flight were consistant with a gradual climb to 22,800 then gradual descent....so that rules out the problem with the computer system being unable to handle anything above FL600

The regs of U2s are not reliable in Mode S as the boxes seem to be rotated

Were ATC expecting a climb to 60K and got confused when it didnt
climb that high , or was the flight curtailed when the confusion broke out ?

A Federal Aviation Administration computer system interpreted the U-2′s flight path at a very high altitude as if it were flying in a much lower and more crowded airspace

Hmmmm ..... Its Mode S must have been very wrong.

Of course the data I have might be a totally separate flight , but it does seem to fit the profile.

There's an interesting article here that discusses in some detail the cause of this outage and the limitations of the ATC computer system:
Exclusive: Air traffic system failure caused by computer memory shortage | Reuters