US flight delays linger after FAA computer failure

[WASHINGTON] US travelers coped with late flights and cancellations for a second day after a now-resolved computer failure at a regional air-traffic control center added to a weekend of havoc from New York to Florida.

At least 2,250 US flights were late on Sunday and more than 150 were canceled, according to FlightAware.com data. Among the most affected airports were those in New York, Washington and Charlotte, North Carolina, according to the flight-tracking website.

On Saturday, some 3,800 flights within, into or out of the US were delayed and 650 were canceled, according to the website. Travelers in some East Coast airports on Saturday were delayed more than three hours before the Federal Aviation Administration fixed the air-traffic control computer breakdown and ended flight restrictions late in the afternoon.

The government's preliminary figures show 492 delays and 476 cancellations on Saturday were attributable to the malfunction in a five-month-old system installed to help modernise the agency's operations in Leesburg, Virginia.

"The FAA is continuing to diagnose the cause of yesterday's problem, and has not seen a reoccurrence of the original issues," Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the agency, said Sunday in an e-mailed statement.

The agency is "working with the airlines to resume normal air traffic operations" after the delay on Saturday, according to the statement.

BLOOMBERG