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Federal Pilot Alert System Goes Down

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The Associated Press

Published: May 24, 2008

WASHINGTON - The government system that issues preflight notices to pilots about runway, equipment and security issues has been down for more than 16 hours, but passenger safety has not been compromised, the Federal Aviation Administration said Friday.

The database has not been able to issue updates or new notices since late Thursday, but pilots have continued to receive any relevant information from local air traffic controllers and through alternate systems, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said Friday.

The servers had gone down before for a few minutes, but this is the longest pilots have been without the service, Brown said. The data is now being transferred to new hardware that had been scheduled to replace the older system within two weeks, she added.

All commercial and business jet pilots were alerted of the problem through a related federal system. But until the problem is resolved, the FAA is deferring any scheduled equipment maintenance work that would normally require a notice, Brown said.

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