“A major breakdown in Southern California’s air traffic control system last week was partly due to a ‘design anomaly’ in the way Microsoft Windows servers were integrated into the system, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times,” Matthew Broersma reports for Techworld.
“The failure was ultimately down to a combination of human error and a design glitch in the Windows servers brought in over the past three years to replace the radio system’s original Unix servers, according to the FAA,” Broersma reports. “The radio system shutdown, which lasted more than three hours, left 800 planes in the air without contact to air traffic control, and led to at least five cases where planes came too close to one another, according to comments by the Federal Aviation Administration reported in the LA Times and The New York Times.”
“As originally designed, the VSCS system used computers that ran on an operating system known as Unix, said Ray Baggett, vice president for the union’s western region. The VSCS system was built for the FAA by Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., at a cost of more than $1.5 billion. When the system was upgraded about a year ago, the original computers were replaced by Dell computers using Microsoft software,” The Los Angeles Times reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Stupid? You decide. We wouldn’t trust Dell computers using the Microsoft Windows operating system to surf the internet safely, much less depend on the combo for safely communicating with 800 planes in flight.