Anger at customs agency in LAX snafu

[question everything]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-airport14aug14,1,1666322.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
From the Los Angeles Times
Anger at customs agency in LAX snafu
Aviation officials criticize the agency for its weak response to a computer glitch that left 17,000 stranded.
By Ted Rohrlich and Tami Abdollah
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

August 14, 2007

Aviation officials criticized U.S. Customs on Monday for being unprepared and taking too long to fix the weekend computer failure at LAX that left more than 17,000 international passengers stranded for hours in airplanes. Accustomed to frequent, short-lived outages, customs officials said they mistakenly believed their computers would be up and running within an hour Saturday.

Then they made another mistake, aviation officials said. They misdiagnosed the problem, deciding it involved high-speed communications lines that link to the national law enforcement databases used to assess possible security threats posed by arriving passengers. They called in the service provider, Sprint Nextel Corp. But a technician did not arrive for four hours, aviation officials said, and took three hours to determine that the transmission lines were not the problem.

(snip)

As planes began to stack up on the tarmac Saturday afternoon and into the evening, airline and airport officials pressed customs to relax its inspection standards and process passengers based on information the passengers themselves provided. But customs officials declined. "We can't risk our security for even one traveler," Fleming said. "What if one was a terrorist?" Meanwhile, Los Angeles International Airport officials discussed defying the federal government and storming aircraft to rescue passengers if frustration led to violence aboard the idling jets... They settled instead for providing food, drink and enough fuel to keep air-conditioning systems running, with customs' blessing.

(snip)

By then, Haney said, airport officials had asked the Federal Aviation Administration to divert some incoming flights, but only two were diverted. "I guess at the end of the day there's pilot discretion," Haney said. Despite the glitches, most pilots wanted to land at LAX.

(snip)

The computer system was up and running again at 11:45 p.m. (The system went down at 2:00 pm). The passenger backlog was cleared hours later.

[Turbineguy]

1. They need to outsource

the technical people to India. That way it can take longer. Let's get with the program people! The Bush Administration is here to destroy the Government. He can't do it without your help!

[notadmblnd]

2. This is a result of offshoring and corporations trying to save $$$

When I was working, our mission critical vendors were on site 7/24. Sounds like these people (Airlines) have contracted with the vendor for the standard four hour response window to save a couple of bucks.