Program glitch blamed for Japanese air traffic shutdown TOKYO (AP) =97 The government said Thursday a glitch in a program made by=20 technology giant NEC, overlooked by both aviation bureau and company=20 technicians for months, led to the failure of Japan's central air traffic=20 control system two weeks ago. The failure, which occurred in both the main= =20 computer and its backup at 7 a.m. on March 1, delayed hundreds of thousands= =20 of passengers and prompted the cancellation of more than 200 flights over a= =20 two-day period. Subsequent investigations identified the cause as a defect= =20 in a program installed by NEC on the central system that collects flight=20 data from airports nationwide and feeds it to air traffic controllers,=20 according to a statement by the transport ministry. Aviation bureau=20 technicians realized the program running on the flight data processing=20 system was flawed when it was installed in September, but dismissed the=20 error as too small to cause serious problems, the statement said. In=20 January, NEC technicians discovered the same defect but decided not to=20 report it as the system had been running smoothly for four months, and left= =20 it unfixed. "The problem was not believed to be of great consequence,"=20 said transport ministry spokesman Motohiro Kaneko. When technicians made=20 changes to a related program on the morning of March 1, it paralyzed the=20 entire system, disabling automatic data transmission of all departures to=20 and from air traffic controllers. The ministry acknowledged that it failed= =20 to test sufficiently for incompatibilities before the other program was=20 updated that morning. NEC said in a statement, "We have confirmed that a mistake in a program=20 made by our company was the cause of the...obstruction of March=20 1." Aviation and NEC officials said it was highly unlikely other air=20 traffic control systems around the world were vulnerable to the same=20 problem. "Logically speaking, unless they run the same program on the same= =20 set up, it would be unlikely," said Kaneko. Technicians reversed the=20 changes that had prompted the shutdown and had the main computer system up= =20 and running within an hour. The planned updates were still being completed,= =20 Kaneko said. All domestic and international flights were grounded for at=20 least half an hour after the failure occurred, but delays continued for two= =20 days because of the backlog of earlier flights. In total, over 200 flights= =20 were canceled, while about 1,300 were delayed. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: http://www.tha.gov.tt/ TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************