By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Monday it temporarily paused flights to and from parts of South Florida due to a radar issue for about an hour and many flights were still be impacted.
The issue affected the FAA’s Miami and Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Centers. Flight tracking website FlightAware said more than 2,800 U.S. flights were delayed nationwide on Monday and 90 canceled.
The FAA said some flights crossing northern Florida “will be delayed” an average of 10 mins or routed around the area until around 7 p.m. ET
In January, a system known as the En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) used to control air traffic prompted the FAA on Jan. 2 to issue a ground stop order in Florida, slowing traffic into airports and snarling hundreds of flights.
The problem with the ERAM system at a major regional air traffic control center in Miami caused dozens of flight delays at Miami and flights into other airports in the southern U.S. state.
ERAM in 2015 replaced the 40-year-old En Route Host computer and backup system used at 20 FAA Air Route Traffic Control Centers nationwide.
The FAA has faced other recent technical issues.
A pilot messaging database outage on Jan. 11 forced a nationwide halt to all U.S. passenger departing traffic for almost two hours, the first such ground stop since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The computer system outage disrupted more than 11,000 U.S. flights. Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen told lawmakers in January the FAA found that the outage occurred when contract personnel “unintentionally deleted files.”
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
