FAA DELAYS NEW CONTROL SYSTEM; SAFETY WORRIES CITED IN DECISION TO POSTPONE LAUNCH IN L.A.

Byline: Phillip W. Browne Daily News Staff Writer

The FAA postponed the launch of its new high-tech air traffic control system in Los Angeles on Wednesday because of software problems that could jeopardize lives, officials said.

``We will not permit a system to go into service until it has been completely tested. We will not field an unsafe system,'' Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Fraser Jones said. ``Passenger safety is our main concern.''

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.

Los Angeles would have been the fifth U.S. region to employ the new system, which is designed to make skies safer. It will eventually replace the failure-prone computers that run on vacuum tubes, which the FAA has used at its Palmdale TRACON center since the 1970s.

An equipment-maintenance employee union applauded the FAA's efforts to bring the new technology online but voiced concern that it is being rushed despite ``serious'' problems.

``These systems went into operation when they knew they were not ready, and technicians weren't trained to fix them,'' said Colleen O'Neil, a spokeswoman for Washington, D.C.-based Professional Airways System Specialists, which represents 10,000 FAA and Department of Defense workers. ``We have fought with them to slow the project down, but have failed.''

In New York, the system failed several times after its December launch when it was processing weather and radar data at the busiest flight times. They reverted to a backup system, but it delayed several flights, she said.

The same thing happened in Atlanta earlier this month, which caused 250 flights to be delayed, she said.

Albuquerque, N.M., and Minneapolis are also online with the new system, and Oakland was planning to begin using it today.

`In December we said the FAA was rolling the dice and hoping they didn't find any major problems,'' said Michael D. Fanfalone, president of Professional Airways Systems Specialists.

``Putting the traveling public in potential peril to pat yourself on the back for making a deadline is not what leadership is about,'' he said.

The outages have been caused by glitches in software that gathers radar, weather and flight information and feeds it to the screen to produce a radar image, O'Neil said. At peak travel times the software can freeze, causing the system to go down.

Backup systems are in place, but they take time to get them running, she said. And repairs are slow because technicians aren't fully trained in the new system.

The new ``host'' computers have been operational in Palmdale for about a year, and have been working in conjunction with the the antiquated system. The ``host'' computers were supposed to begin controlling all Los Angeles air traffic Wednesday without the help of the old system.

Concerns about aging air and ground radar systems in Los Angeles rose when inadequate ground radar systems contributed to the deaths of 34 people killed in a collision at Los Angeles International Airport on Feb. 1, 1991. A USAir Boeing 737 was given clearance to land on top of a SkyWest commuter plane that was taxiing at the airport.

The National Transportation Safety Board blamed the collision on FAA system, staffing and training problems, including outdated ground radar gear that had ``lengthy'' outages because of a lack of spare parts and qualified servicing.

Problems with a different radar system at the LAX tower - the one that monitors aircraft flying in the Los Angeles basin - also were cited after an Aug. 31, 1986, midair collision over Cerritos that killed 82 people in the air and on the ground.

Following the 1991 crash, FAA equipment and staffing were upgraded in Los Angeles, but it still relied on the infrastructure of the aging system.