Data center outage causes major flight delays

A system error took down the National Airspace Data Interchange Network (NADIN), a multi-billion dollar data center operated by the FAA, for several hours yesterday. The system outage made thousands of airline flight plans unavailable, meaning thousands of planes could not take off in the United States until the issue was fixed.

The problem has been linked to a router that went down after routine scheduled maintenance. The data center did have a back-up in place, but it failed to start after the main router failed.

This is NADIN’s fourth outage since its introduction in 2002. The system has been heavily criticized for its high cost and poor reliability.

Source | Computer World