New York, NY —

US Senator Charles Schumer is urging the FAA to conduct an internal investigation of air-traffic control technology.

This after thousands of passengers at New York metro-area airports were hit hard by flight cancellations and delays of up to four hours into Friday night, all because of a cascading computer failure in the nation's air-traffic control system. The New York Democrat says aviation officials are behind schedule when it comes to making technology upgrades.

The trouble started early Friday with the failure of a computer in Atlanta that processes flight plans and sends them to air-traffic controllers. The data were routed to another computer in Salt Lake City, but that system was then overloaded by the increased volume.