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Title: Printer Glitch Causes More Airport Delays Source: The Record, Northern New Jersey Publication date: 2000-05-12

A day after torrential rain up and down the Eastern Seaboard caused major delays at the three major New York-area airports, another glitch added a setback on Thursday: a faulty computer printer. As a backup system to assist air traffic controllers, a high- speed printer at the New York air traffic center in Ronkonkoma, N.Y., prints out the progress of flights on their radar screens. The printouts identify the location of airplanes in the congested skies over the metropolitan region in the event the computers should shut down.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman James Peters said the printer went down Thursday at 10:25 a.m.

"As a result, the FAA shut down the system, and stopped departures for 15 minutes until we could bring it up," Peters said. Flights at Newark International Airport, Kennedy International, and La Guardia all were affected.

He said the printer was back on line by 10:40 a.m., but there was a "backlog of delays" as a result.

Bill Cahill, spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the three airports, said the delays were minimal and affected only departing flights.

Thursday's delays were nothing compared with what happened Wednesday night. Slow-moving thunderstorms brought the three major airports to a virtual standstill, and caused dozens of canceled flights and delays of up to eight hours. Continental Airlines, the major carrier at Newark, canceled about 100 flights Wednesday night.

Publication date: 2000-05-12 ) 2000, YellowBrix, Inc. http://realcities.yellowbrix.com/pages/realcities/Story.nsp?story_id=10464332&site=charlotte&ID=realcities&scategory=Computers%3AY2K

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-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), May 12, 2000