The 2014 Los Angeles Center outage showed how one unusual U-2 flight plan could drive conflict-processing logic into a resource-exhaustion failure that rippled across regional air traffic.
A 2015 software upgrade at Washington Center retained controller-display data in memory instead of deleting it, eventually exhausting resources and disrupting East Coast air traffic.
The January 2023 NOTAM outage showed how maintenance work on a legacy safety database could corrupt both operational service and its backup, forcing the first nationwide U.S. departure ground stop in more than two decades.
FAA's Advanced Automation System tried to replace the core of U.S. air-traffic control in one sweeping program. Ambitious scope, unstable requirements, weak oversight, and underestimated software complexity forced a major 1994 restructuring.