Posted on 09/16/2004 11:27:49 AM PDT by BenLurkin
PALMDALE - Failure to purge the radio communication system at the Los Angeles Enroute Air Traffic Control Center in Palmdale caused Tuesday's nearly four-hour communication breakdown with hundreds of airplanes throughout Southern California, according to a preliminary investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration. "A required 30-day maintenance check on the primary radio system was not done," said William Shumann, FAA spokesman in Washington D.C. "It was a human error; it was not a flaw in the system."
Hamid Ghaffari, an air traffic controller at the Palmdale facility who is also an official with the air traffic controllers union, said FAA officials had known for more than a year that the system was prone to shutting down if it was not routinely purged.
"If they had known about the problem for the past 14 months, why haven't they been working on a test to fix it? Why would they wait 14 months to address an issue of this magnitude?"
The breakdown, which occurred at 4:40 p.m. and ended about 8:15 p.m., severed radio and land-line phone communication capabilities with as many as 800 aircraft that were flying at the time of the outage. Airspace radar coverage remained fully operational and en route aircraft were handed off to other aircraft-control facilities.
All flights scheduled to arrive or depart from the affected airports in Southern California and most of Arizona and Nevada were delayed until late Tuesday evening.
Ghaffari said he was on his way home from the air traffic control center when he learned of the outage from co-workers who telephoned him on their cellular phones.
"They called to tell me what was happening. Several of our controllers were extremely traumatized by seeing aircraft that looked like they were on a collision course," Ghaffari said.
"To see that unfold before your eyes and to have no control over it is absolutely devastating."
Three air traffic controllers filed on-the-job injury claims due to the trauma they experienced Tuesday evening, Ghaffari said. Still, all three still came to work, as did Ghaffari and the rest of Palmdale's air traffic controllers Wednesday morning, he said.
"My hat's off to these people for having witnessed these terrifying events and having the ability to show up to work the following day," Ghaffari said.
On-site FAA maintenance technicians, not air traffic controllers, are responsible for the maintenance of the radio system, Ghaffari said. Controllers were unaware of a potential communication breakdown, Ghaffari said.
"The air traffic controllers were caught completely off guard," he said. "No one had known this possibility existed."
The FAA did not have an explanation Wednesday about why the radio system was not maintained on schedule, Shumann said.
As a result of Tuesday's events, Shumann said FAA officials were reviewing maintenance checklists and protocols to confirm all required maintenance operation procedures were being followed at the 20 other air traffic control facilities across the nation.
Shumann said in the coming weeks, the FAA will add a new feature to the communications system to prevent service disruptions when routine maintenance is not performed.
The FAA announced it also will start purging radio systems at traffic-control centers nationwide every two weeks.
According to an FAA statement released Wednesday, "Although FAA air traffic control systems have nearly perfect reliability, any system failure - no matter how rare - is unacceptable because of the inconvenience to air travelers and cost to airlines."
Doug Church, spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, criticized the FAA for downplaying the level of danger to passengers and pilots as a result of the outage.
"This was a very serious situation," he said. "They said safety was not compromised. That was a very irresponsible and untrue statement."
Church said in five instances the minimum air space between aircraft was violated, and in two of those instances aircraft nearly collided.
Because aircraft collision avoidance systems alarmed pilots on nearby planes, the collisions were prevented, Church said.
"This is a very rare thing," Church said. "You'd be hard pressed to find instances anywhere in the country of this seriousness and complexity."
Each day, controllers at the Palmdale Center typically handle about 6,000 aircraft in a radius of 177,000 square miles.
Church and Ghaffari commended the efforts of air traffic controllers, who frantically made call after call on their cell phones to aircraft, neighboring air traffic control centers and airports.
"They were heroic," Church said. "Controllers are trained to think quickly and decisively, and they certainly did an incredible job, being able to turn a very serious situation and make do with the tools they had and get the job done."
Oh the humanity!
Hamid Ghaffari.........?
Uh . . . .
I don't buy this story one little bit.
Someone/something took down the system, and they can do it again in a number of places all at once, creating chaos.
IMO, this was a test. Something bigger is coming.
Even having a system that "automatically shuts down without any warning" is nuts for an air controlling system.
If they make this story fly- my hat's off to them, but I don't buy it for one little minute. It's crap.
Correct. If it did shut down, what kept it down for hours? Not plausible.
Too bad not one of the controllers had the sense to step outside with a handheld radio and notify the airliners what was happening.
And how do you "purge" a radio? Pump mineral oil up it's antenna?
This guy, Hamid Ghaffari, well, words fail me. After reading his take on what happened and the tremendous stress he claims his controllers went through, well, something just does not sit well with me, after reading what what he has said!
Those radios things get stuffer up with all the freekin-sees. And you gotta cleans then out by hand. Messy. Smelly. But someones (a union man, too) gots to do it.
Duh. . . would some one please pass me by suicide belt and 72 Virgins for helping those infidels meet Allah.
Let's see. FAA (NATCOMM) radio goes on the blink. Local CALI REPUBLICAN is campaigning, and ARRRNOLD is flying in to give speech and support.
ARRRRNOLD is held up circling in the air.
NAWWWWWWW!!!!! No one would do this just to influence elections in California.
I mean, hasn't this happened before, the radio going out because it needs to be PURGED (is that the same as being given an enema?)
Might as well be Baghdad Bob reporting this lame excuse.
JMHO, of course.
Union games.....
I can only think of "Airplane" when the runway lights go out, then we see Johnny holding the unplugged cord in the control area saying "just kidding."
Wouldn't have worked. Centers handle aircraft over several states, most of which are too far away to contact directly.
I don't doubt that was the problem here. The remote radio relay system crapping out.
Believe it or not, the F.A.A. records every transmission with every aircraft; these are scheduled to download by modem to Kansas City each day, why there would be a need to manually purge the cache or HD confounds me.
I also think the report is garbage.
Purging in my mind sounds as if there is a memory system that needs to be emptied / defragged or something along those lines.
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