Passenger Trains > Huge delays on the (air) NEC

70 percent of BWI flights are grounded due to a botched rollout of a new flight management system.

Reagan national Dulles LaGuardia and JFK are affected.too.

Wouldn't it be great AmTrak could roll out express Acela sets and collect 3,000 of those dollar fifty a mile fares?

Posted from Android

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 70 percent of BWI flights are grounded due to a
> botched rollout of a new flight management
> system.
>
> Reagan national Dulles LaGuardia and JFK are
> affected.too.
>
> Wouldn't it be great AmTrak could roll out express
> Acela sets and collect 3,000 of those dollar
> fifty a mile fares?
>
> Posted from Android

According to FlightAware, the impact seems to be less than that.  At BWI, 71 depatures (23%) and 82 arrivals (28%) have been canceled so far today.  Similar numbers at DCA. No other airports are showing more than 15%.

Some of my family got caught up in the mess - their flight out of Atlantic City was cancelled. Not a fun day...

Posted from iPhone

A flight management system? Is this the FAA Version of the NS movement planner/auto router (or as a dispatcher called it "movement preventer" or "movement stopper")?

Posted from Android

The FAA said that most delays had been resolved by 4pm, and it was looking to remove the remaining gate holds.  Problems began around 9.45am, and snowballed from there.  "Hundreds" but not thousands of flights were affected.Here's what the WSJ says happened:


Delays began building about 9:45 a.m., according to FlightRadar24, a flight monitoring website. Flights bound for airports in the Washington area were some of the most affected, including Washington’s Reagan National Airport and Dulles International, as well as Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in North Carolina.By midafternoon, 50% of inbound flights and 42% of outbound flights had been canceled at Reagan National, and delays were averaging about three hours, according to FlightRadar24. In Baltimore, 58% of inbound flights and 36% of outbound flights had been canceled, and delays were averaging over an hour.Flights departing from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and John F. Kennedy and La Guardia airports in New York that normally fly over the Washington region as they head southward were also affected, although the FAA had said it was trying to route the flights around the affected area.


My sister spent two hours waiting in Newark for a delayed ibbound flight,

Flights in DC and NY region
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/15/15 17:04 by Lackawanna484.

I live near Dulles and was outside most of the day. I noticed there were no airplanes heading in or out this afternoon. Usually there's an inbound every couple minutes.
Clarence G

Here's the NYTimes story (I think you can get a limited number of stories free without subscribing):

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/business/technical-problem-suspends-flights-along-east-coast.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Notice especially the last comment:

Cody Damon, of Boston, posted an image of a failed attempt to reroute a Southwest flight for his mother, who was returning home through Baltimore.“My mom is still waiting in line at BWI. Reading these tweets doesn’t make me feel confident she will arrive in BOS,” he said, using the airport codes for Baltimore and Boston. “I’m going to book Amtrak before everyone else figures out there is a 10:40 p.m. train headed north tonight.”

I was caught up in this mess coming back from Japan yesterday - lots of unhappiness at JFK. There was a group going from the Dominican Repub. to Cleveland who were preparing to spend the night on the floor because their inbound flight connection was held in DC. Airlines won't do squat for you unless it's "their fault". What makes it worse is the inexcuseable lack of decent ground transportation options at JFK. Every other developed country in the world has made sure their principal airports are tied into the national ground transportation system. When I arrived in Tokyo, the principal Japan Railways line into the city from Narita was out of service, but they allowed all JR pass users to use the parallel private line at no cost.