A computer malfunction temporarily shut down the flight dispatch system used by a Delta Air Lines Inc. subsidiary last week, causing cancellations and delays that affected flights all day across the unit's entire travel network in the eastern U.S. and Canada.

Atlantic Southeast Airlines (ASA), an Atlanta-based Delta Connection carrier, said in an advisory posted on Delta's Web site that the glitch occurred early last Monday and "resulted in a temporary outage of its computer-based flight dispatch system."

The dispatch system provides pilots and flight crews with vital data such as flight plans, weather forecasts, fuel information and alternate airports that could be used to make emergency landings.

ASA spokesman Sam Watts said that airline personnel were forced to copy the information by hand and deliver it to the flight crews until the outage was fixed.

Delta Technologies Inc., which handles technical support for ASA, is currently reviewing the system to ensure that it has the "functionality and redundancy" needed to prevent recurrences of the outage, Watts said. Until the review is completed, he added, the airline won't be able to say whether the shutdown was caused by a hardware problem, a software glitch or a complete systems failure.

The IT problems forced ASA to cancel more than 200 flights and to delay about the same number of planes, according to Watts. ASA operates an average of 679 flights daily from 78 airports, so "a very significant number of flights were impacted," he said.

ASA said the systems outage was resolved by 3 p.m. EST, after which time it was able to resume issuing computer-based flight dispatch notices to its crews. But it took an additional three to four hours "to get everything moving, in terms of airplanes and [the] passengers that had to be rerouted," Watts said.

Computerworld

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