Glad I don't have to fly anywhere today

[Thomkal]

Chicago flights stopped after fire at FAA facility - CNN.com

Bizarre story, an attempted suicide and then fire set in air control center outside Chicago has or will snarl air traffic for most of the day it seems.

[Solecismic]

It's too bad someone could get to the point where he thinks this is an appropriate legacy in life.

My brother-in-law had to spend the entire day waiting at Hartford airport with his one-year-old son, and ended up missing his youngest sister's wedding. There are thousands of stories just like this - people who never did anything to this guy.

[Dutch]

Spending the afternoob in O'Hare because of this jackwagon.

[Thomkal]

Ugh Jim and Dutch-that really sucks. I wonder what can be done to prevent these kind of delays when something unexpected happens in an tower.

[timmae]

On the joking side.... darwin tells me we should be getting closer to getting rid of these idiots...

On the serious side... I have to hope someone just didn't see the signs. We need to be more diligent as a society to start listening, seeing, interpreting the signals before the catastrophic event.

[tarcone]

The Iowa football team had to bus 6 hours to W. Lafayette because of this.

[Neuqua]

On Friday morning I was only able to fly out of O'Hare because my plane had already left the gate. My flight was at 6am and at 6:05 the pilot told us there was some issues at the tower. Passengers learned about what was happening via social media. Luckily they let us take off around 9am after 3 hours of just waiting around.

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

Ugh Jim and Dutch-that really sucks. I wonder what can be done to prevent these kind of delays when something unexpected happens in an tower.

I just want to clarify what something here. This didn't occur in a control "tower" for a Chicago airport. This was at building that houses the controllers who are responsible for controlling a large chunk of the airspace over a number of states at altitudes typically from about 14000 up to like 60000 feet. We call these controllers "center". There are a number of them like New York, Washington, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Cleveland, Indy, Memphis, Kansas City, Ft Worth, Phoenix, Salt Lake, LA, Oakland, Seattle, Denver and Minneapolis.

These Center controllers are responsible for the routing of all commercial airliners across the entire US. Take one of them out like you have here and you have a big gap. Chicago center wasn't taking overflying aircraft over the weekend. I had to fly into Canada on my transcon from SFO to EWR and we just not allowed in Chicago's airspace.

This whole incident makes it harder on Chicago's airports, because you have to have Center functioning in order to get planes into the airports. WIth the operation pretty much shut down passengers were just out of luck.

The US aviation system is designed to operate on a 'Best day" philosophy. Meaning that as long as nothing is wrong it operates great. But once weather somewhere pops up the system starts to get mucked. I try to explain to people how bad weather in Pennsylvania causes big delays in NY. Center isn't that much different. If you take a funnel and block off of half of it you can't keep pouring the same amount of sugar in it. Such is aviation.

This whole incident sucks. Cost me a great deal of time on Saturday.

{edit: This post made me a Grizzled Vet! Only 12 years after registration!}

[bhlloy]

He's probably going to get a slap on the wrist for this. What a selfish jackass. I'm pretty sympathetic to suicides but I can't find any sympathy in this case.

PilotMan - pretty incredible there isn't some sort of redundancy for this. I don't know how much the equipment costs to make that feasible but when so much of this country and the economy relies on air travel, how is that not the case? If we had this kind of outage at work we'd probably all be out of a job.

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

He's probably going to get a slap on the wrist for this. What a selfish jackass. I'm pretty sympathetic to suicides but I can't find any sympathy in this case.

PilotMan - pretty incredible there isn't some sort of redundancy for this. I don't know how much the equipment costs to make that feasible but when so much of this country and the economy relies on air travel, how is that not the case? If we had this kind of outage at work we'd probably all be out of a job.

I'm sure that there is some redundancy within that facility. I mean, there are workstations in the building itself that are backups. I don't know the actual extent of the redundancy, but clearly there isn't anything to deal with this type of hiccup.

The entire system hasn't been upgraded in years. Every year there is a budget battle in congress that threatens to take away more FAA funding. Our ATC system is solely responsible for the vast majority of daily delays in aviation travel. Our system struggles to handle the volume of traffic that moves. Like I said, it works on a good day, but really struggles on anything else.

There has been a large push going back 15 years or more to modernize the entire system. We are in the process of it, but it's very slow and expensive. You can't just change out years and years of standards and regulation overnight. It has to be done one step at a time. Or it has to be put in place all over before anything can be changed, because you can't have procedures different in one area and not another.

[Blackadar]

Sucks. I think he'll get more than a slap on the wrist.

I was delayed two hours last night, but that was due to the rain that keeps fucking falling in Florida. It's supposed to be tapering off this time of year, but we've gotten over 11 inches at my house this month with 3 days to go (and all 3 predict rain). There's literally a moat in my front yard.

[bhlloy]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

I'm sure that there is some redundancy within that facility. I mean, there are workstations in the building itself that are backups. I don't know the actual extent of the redundancy, but clearly there isn't anything to deal with this type of hiccup.

Well, that's not really redundancy. God forbid what happens if somebody manages to take out the entire facility and it takes more than 2 weeks to get it back up and running? This is pretty much IT/disaster recovery 101, it's pretty terrifying that our air travel isn't up to those basic standards.

[PilotMan]

To be fair, I doubt if that level of redundancy exists anywhere in the world.

[JPhillips]

We don't have enough money to upgrade our ATC, but we can light billions on fire for our new glorious war. The amount it would take to commit to a full upgrade is peanuts compared to other things we fund. It's not about how much, it's about our priorities.

[timmae]

I was thinking about redundancy also buddy... kinda scary that one asshat can take out this much damage. If that is the state of our traffic control system I am all for upgrades and new systems. I'll let others who are paid way more than I figure out where the money comes from. I am seriously thinking about driving down to Florida later this weke rather than mess around with Ohare. And just when they returned to the "busiest airport in the world"... blah!

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

I just want to clarify what something here. This didn't occur in a control "tower" for a Chicago airport. This was at building that houses the controllers who are responsible for controlling a large chunk of the airspace over a number of states at altitudes typically from about 14000 up to like 60000 feet. We call these controllers "center". There are a number of them like New York, Washington, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Cleveland, Indy, Memphis, Kansas City, Ft Worth, Phoenix, Salt Lake, LA, Oakland, Seattle, Denver and Minneapolis.

These Center controllers are responsible for the routing of all commercial airliners across the entire US. Take one of them out like you have here and you have a big gap. Chicago center wasn't taking overflying aircraft over the weekend. I had to fly into Canada on my transcon from SFO to EWR and we just not allowed in Chicago's airspace.

This whole incident makes it harder on Chicago's airports, because you have to have Center functioning in order to get planes into the airports. WIth the operation pretty much shut down passengers were just out of luck.

The US aviation system is designed to operate on a 'Best day" philosophy. Meaning that as long as nothing is wrong it operates great. But once weather somewhere pops up the system starts to get mucked. I try to explain to people how bad weather in Pennsylvania causes big delays in NY. Center isn't that much different. If you take a funnel and block off of half of it you can't keep pouring the same amount of sugar in it. Such is aviation.

This whole incident sucks. Cost me a great deal of time on Saturday.

{edit: This post made me a Grizzled Vet! Only 12 years after registration!}

Congrats on the much deserved change in status.

I was hoping you would chime in here because I obviously know nothing about this. Thanks for the explanation on the reality here. Seems like an antiquated/not practical way of doing things especially in today's ever presence of potential terrorism (at least from me looking from the outside). Do they not have an "emergency" drill or system available to them for situations like this? Where they are prepared to move/call up people and systems to other centers to help cover the gaps?

[Thomkal]

ah just read the other post from you Pilot, and my question may be answered already. Perhaps someone in the aviation industry should mention Isis to Congress? Seems like that's the only way to get some much needed attention these days. If one person could cause that much stress in the system, think what an organized group of people could do to it.

[CU Tiger]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

To be fair, I doubt if that level of redundancy exists anywhere in the world.

In the data center world companies invest billions in "redundant hot offsite back ups"

Billions annually.

I guess Google is more important than air travel.


{I dont mean that as a slap at you, Pilotman, I'm just frustrated at the lack of logic that statement uncovers.}

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by CU Tiger

In the data center world companies invest billions in "redundant hot offsite back ups"

Billions annually.

I guess Google is more important than air travel.


{I dont mean that as a slap at you, Pilotman, I'm just frustrated at the lack of logic that statement uncovers.}

Google Total Revenue FY 2013 - 59.85 B
Google Total Expenses FY 2013 - 25.86 B
Google Total Profit FY 2013 - 33.97B

FAA FY 2015 Budget TOTAL - 9.75B

What can I say?

[CU Tiger]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

Google Total Revenue FY 2013 - 59.85 B
Google Total Expenses FY 2013 - 25.86 B
Google Total Profit FY 2013 - 33.97B

FAA FY 2015 Budget TOTAL - 9.75B

What can I say?

That Google should buyout the FAA and run the countries Air Traffic?

Heck I bet air travel would cost less, be more pleasant and safer.
Just like everything else the government tries to do.

[PilotMan]

Not the point at all.

The point is that it's a big deal that we don't spend billions on backing up everything and having super fantastic redundant systems and that Google is somehow better. It's a matter of scope. The size of Google dwarfs the amount of money that is spent on the entire US aviation system.

Better's got nothing to do with it. It's chump change in comparison. It's apples and oranges.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

This whole incident makes it harder on Chicago's airports, because you have to have Center functioning in order to get planes into the airports. WIth the operation pretty much shut down passengers were just out of luck.

So what you are saying is the government works much like most huge businesses. They don't worry about issues and only worry about the norm.