[Infowarrior] - LAX outage is blamed on a single computer?!?

[Richard Forno]

LAX outage is blamed on a single computer
City officials demand a full report on the U.S. Customs system failure and
contingency plans.
By Tami Abdollah, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 15, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-lax15aug15,1,6802259.st
ory?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=1&cset=true

U.S. Customs officials said Tuesday that they had traced the source of last
weekend's system outage that left 17,000 international passengers stranded
in airplanes to a malfunctioning network interface card on a single desktop
computer in the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX.

The card, which allows computers to connect to a local area network,
experienced a partial failure that started about 12:50 p.m. Saturday,
slowing down the system, said Jennifer Connors, a chief in the office of
field operations for the Customs and Border Protection agency.

As data overloaded the system, a domino effect occurred with other computer
network cards, eventually causing a total system failure a little after 2
p.m., Connors said.

"All indications are there was no hacking, no tampering, no terrorist link,
nothing like that," she said. "It was an internal problem" contained to the
Los Angeles International Airport system.

The system was restored about nine hours later, only to give out again late
Sunday for about 80 minutes, until about 1:15 a.m. Monday. The second outage
was caused by a power supply failure, Connors said. But customs officials
are investigating whether the Saturday incident may have played a role in
Sunday's outage.

Los Angeles City Council members Bill Rosendahl and Janice Hahn called
Tuesday for an immediate report from Los Angeles World Airports, which runs
LAX, on actions taken by the customs agency to permanently correct the
computer malfunction problem. They also called for World Airports to report
on contingency plans for working with customs and other officials to
properly deal with passengers in the event of another such breakdown.

Nancy Castles, a spokeswoman for the airports agency, said airport and
customs officials are discussing how to handle a similar incident should it
occur. The customs agency "has total federal jurisdiction on whether or not
to allow people on or off the planes," Castles said.

During the incident, the customs agency authorized airport officials to
supply food, water and even diapers to stranded passengers, as well as fuel
to keep air-conditioning systems running on planes.

Also Tuesday, Rep Jane Harman (D-Venice) requested a comprehensive briefing
from customs officials in Washington early next week.

Customs and Border Protection agency spokesman Michael Fleming said the
agency had formed a group in Washington to study the system malfunction:
"how it happened, how we're going to address it . . . . "

A plan was already in place this year to update and replace customs' entire
information technology system at major international airports, with work at
LAX scheduled to be completed by October 2008, Connors said.

tami.abdollah at latimes.com