The Federal Aviation Administration’s long-troubled En Route Automation Modernisation (ERAM) system suffered another setback on 15 August, when a software update sparked computer problems that resulted in hundreds of delays and cancellations, the FAA says.
The agency pins the problem on an update to software at its Leesburg, Virginia, area control center, which is one of 20 facilities nationwide that oversee high-altitude airspace using ERAM, a software-based automation system developed by Lockheed Martin.
Described by the FAA as being central to its NextGen modernisation efforts, ERAM has a history of delays, cost overruns and numerous malfunctions since the FAA began rolling it out across ATC facilities in 2009.
Though ERAM was initially scheduled to be fully-operational by the end of 2010, the FAA did not declare the system complete until 30 April.
Details of the 15 August malfunction remain vague.
“The FAA is focusing on a recent software upgrade at a high-altitude radar facility in Leesburg, Va., as the possible source of yesterday’s automation problems,” the agency says in a statement on its Facebook page.
The agency responded by disabling the software update while it assesses the problem, but the outage caused 492 flight delays and 476 cancellations, it says.
The FAA adds that the failure does not suggest any “inherent problems” with the ERAM system, which has a 99.99% availability rate since completed.
Lockheed Martin, which manufacturers the ERAM system, says its engineers and technologists are assisting the FAA.
ERAM, a hardware and software system that cost more than $2 billion, has been hailed by Lockheed and FAA officials for bringing improved efficiency and safety to the US air traffic system.
ERAM predicts aircraft paths through time and space using radar data and GPS-based automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) reports, says Lockheed’s website.
It enables each of the FAA’s regional centers to track 1,900 aircraft simultaneously and allows aircraft to be spaced within 3 miles of each other.
ERAM replaced a 1960s-era system called HOST, which could track 1,100 aircraft at once and limited aircraft to flying no less than 5mi apart, according to government documents.
But ERAM has a troubled past, including a number of software failures.
The most high-profile incident prior to 15 August occurred on 30 April 2014, when a Lockheed Martin U-2 surveillance aircraft repeatedly crossed Southern California airspace at 60,000ft.
ERAM incorrectly labeled the aircraft as flying at 10,000ft, according to reports, and failed while calculating an “extensive number of routings” required to keep the U-2 separated from other low-altitude traffic, say reports.
The outage prompted a ground stop at Los Angeles International airport, resulting in about 50 cancellations and 455 delays.
In 2012, the Government Accountability Office released a report finding a “number of fundamental weaknesses” with ERAM, including those related to management weakness and “extensive software problems”.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
