Spy plane cause of LA air traffic control breakdown
The Federal Aviation Administration has confirmed a Cold War era spy plane was ultimately responsible for last week’s air traffic control glitch which caused air travel chaos for thousands on the West Coast.
In a statement the FAA said air traffic control "experienced problems while processing a flight plan filed for a U-2 aircraft that operates at very high altitudes under visual flight rules."
The U-2 is similar to aircraft that flew high-altitude spy missions over Soviet Russia around 50 years ago.
NBC News report had earlier reported anonymous sources confirming this.
Last Wednesday, Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center’s ERAM computer system went down resulting in several canceled flights and delays affecting thousands of passengers at airports including Los Angeles, San Diego and Las Vegas.
The NBC News report said a Lockheed U-2 passed through airspace at 60,000 feet and seemingly overloaded the computer system.
It said back-up systems also malfunctioned.
The US Air Force still operates a fleet of about 30 U-2 aircraft which are gradually being phased out.
The US Air Force confirmed one of the planes entered LA area airspace on a routine training exercise but denied it was the cause of the outage.
The Air Force said it "filed all the proper flight plan paperwork in accordance with all FAA regulations."
The FAA reported the specific problem that caused the malfunction has been fixed but declined to elaborate.
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