FAA Meltdown

The system came to a screeching halt yesterday as an FAA computer system that processes flight plans at a facility outside Atlanta failed about 1:30 pm Eastern time at a time when a second system at Salt Lake that processes western flight-plan data tried to handle the entire country but failed to keep up with demand, creating a several-hours-long backlog. The agency is still trying to find out why computers failed.
"This was never a safety issue,” said FAA Spokesperson Diane Spitaliere. “It was an inconvenience issue. We don't know what went wrong, but this shouldn't have happened. We are still looking into it.”