Lawmakers demand answers on FAA outage

House Transportation and Infrastructure Democrats are seeking a Transportation Department investigation of a glitch at one of FAA's two flight-plan centers responsible on Thursday for hundreds of delayed or canceled flights and thousands of grounded travelers at multiple major airports.

Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar, D-Minn., and Aviation Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Costello, D-Ill., wrote DOT Inspector General Calvin Scovel asking for a 60-day study "to examine the causes of the problem and whether FAA's corrective action plan will prevent future problems."

An FAA spokesman via e-mail said, "Safety is FAA's number one priority. We are investigating Thursday's outage and we will work with Congress on this important issue."

An earlier agency statement blamed the delays on a 5 a.m. router problem at the agency's center in Salt Lake City that was fixed four hours later. The agency said air traffic control radar and communication with aircraft were not affected but services used primarily for traffic flow and flight planning were unavailable electronically.