AIR-TRAFFIC SYSTEM TAKES FLIGHT CONTROLLERS UNION SEES POTENTIAL SAFETY PROBLEMS.

Byline: Phillip W. Browne Daily News Staff Writer

Delayed for four weeks, the Federal Aviation Administration's new high-tech air traffic control computer in Los Angeles has come on line without glitches, officials said Tuesday.

FAA officials said the system is more reliable than the previous one, but the air traffic controller union is skeptical, particularly because of problems getting the computer to run properly.

``The financial fiasco seriously compromises the safety of the flying public,'' said Michael D. Fanfalone, president of the Professional Airway Systems Specialists.

Fanfalone said he believes the FAA is ``rolling the dice'' in using the system so soon, in light of the FAA's $250 million budget shortfall this fiscal year.

``Repairs on air traffic control systems could be delayed or deferred and staff could face even longer hours and even more responsibilities to make up for the agency's mismanagement mistakes,'' Fanfalone said. However, FAA spokesman William Shoeman said the system, which began monitoring traffic over Los Angeles on Sunday, is far more reliable and easier to maintain.

``It also has added capacity to prepare for future air traffic growth,'' he said.

The new high-tech system is now in operation at the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center using a powerful IBM server expected to crash only once every 25 years, FAA spokesman William Shoeman said. The older systems were crashing about once every six months.

The Los Angeles center, which controls flight patterns between the U.S.-Mexico border, Central California, Nevada and the Pacific Ocean, is the fifth U.S. center to begin using the system, Shoeman said.

It was installed last year as part of a $425 million FAA modernization project and had been operating in conjunction with the antiquated, failure-prone systems that were installed in the early 1980s, Shoeman said.

The new computers were supposed to begin exclusively controlling traffic Feb. 3, but glitches in software that gathers radar, weather and flight information to produce a radar image was causing the computers to freeze periodically, officials of Professional Airway Systems Specialists said.

Problems with the same computer system in New York and Atlanta left controllers unable to guide planes for several hours, but the glitches appear to have been corrected there, officials said.

The computers are in use in New York, Boston, Albuquerque, N.M., Houston and Los Angeles. All of the FAA's stations are expected to be using the new systems by September, Shoeman said.