Tony Vella the local president of the National Air Traffic Controllerse Association said, "We literally run those airplanes in wingtip to wingtip on parallel runways. I don't know what it's going to take out there - if the airplanes are going to have to trade paint out there - before the FAA gets this thing fixed."
The system malfunctioned just before 10 a.m. and was out for 42 minutes, said Ian Gregor, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
The same system on the same runway failed on Aug. 7 for several hours, delaying dozens of flights around the country.
The airport has four parallel runways, one of which is closed for construction.
It averages 1,800 daily flights and this summer's passenger total is expected to reach 18.7 million, 200,000 more than last year. In 2005, more than 60 million people passed through the airport.
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