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."
"Handheld radio....". Well, Snoper, the problem is most centers have in excess of 30 sectors (controller areas of responsibility) active at any time. Each sector will be handling 10 to 20 aircraft or more, as much as 300-400 miles away. Now the guy with the handheld standing outside would be REAL busy. And the guys running the messages back & forth to sectors would have multiple fights to get their messages priority. Also more that 100 frequencies active at any one time. Might be workable in a tower on one freq, but NOT in a center.
But we're talking hundreds of airplanes. The guy steps outside the building and contacts one airplane on one frequency and tells him, what? Gives him a laundry list of the several hundred airplanes to contact on a half dozen frequencies? Nope, won't happen.
I've forgotten more than most people know about IFR, but I believe that when comm is lost, the AC procedes according to his last clearance. It sounds like some controllers almost lost it when they saw airplanes come close, but they shouldn't have. The odds of "blue sky" theory along with TCAS worked here as advertized.
Now if they can get over their dinosaur thinking and distribute genuine "highway-in-the-sky" technology so that there is no single-point failure possible, then we'll be a lot better off. And it will become impossible for ATC to become a terrorist target, because they won't exist.
>>They provided no additional information, other than to say one incident involved separation that was only slightly below the required 5 3/4 miles.<<
A few years ago on a flight from Dallas to Reno I observed a 757 pass beneath my flight at no more than 3000 feet. It approached from approx. 320 degrees and went directly below us.
I didn't feel or see any course alterations of the aircraft I was on.
Above 29,000' vertical separation required is 2,000', with no lateral separation needed. If less than 2'000', five miles lateral is needed. Below 29'000', only 1,000' is needed. This will soon change to 1,000' at all altitudes for aircraft equipped with modern atlitude sensing/navigation gear.
Yes, with out your ICOM avation radio and say "hold the planes at the outer markers.....rack 'em, stack 'em and pack 'em"
I used to work with a (fired) patco controller who told me that when things got busy, there were two types of controllers: hair-twisters and ball-grabbers. LOL!
Apparently that's what happened. The system shut down without any warning because of this "safety feature".
Brilliant system design.
Have I been hanging around FR too long, or is that suspicious?
I know "Ham" Gharaffi and can say that his comments, though awkward sounding to conservatives, truly reflect the Union response to another FAA screwup. In other words, he spouted a bit of hyperbole so that maybe someone would take notice. Sadly, the public often sees such rhetoric as hyperbolic and soon forgets that cracks in the dike of a vaunted government institution is a harbinger of a worse calamity in the offing.
A sad comment on this situation is that one doesn't need a terrorist plan enacted to wreak havoc on the FAA. The FAA is fully incompetent in enough areas of management and technology to crumble on its own. Putting the Union rhetoric to one side, our systems are fraught with internal glitches that compromise the electronic components of air traffic control. Most of these are quickly corrected by the personnel component of air traffic control.
Nonetheless, in the compound maze of patch work technology, built over decades of one computer system and programs overlaying a previous generation, it's not uncommon to see the lizard ganglia beneath the surface momentarily arise and take a bite out of the mechanism.
Nope, my friends, this is not a test run by terrorists or some trial run conspiracy at work. This is the FAA, underfunded and understaffed, having a bad hair day.
disclaimer: The above dissertation in no way is meant to impugn the public impression or integrity of the FAA. The author believes the FAA to be an excellent organization, fully deserving of the public trust.
Sounds like their CYA team hadn't heard of the Google cache or the Internet Time Machine.
Ha! Apparently you do not know of government job security. ..No longer employed? *snicker* Unless there are pictures of the responsible tech doing unmentionable things to an endangered animal, this guy/gal can look forward to a long career and good retirement.
Separation standards at the time of your incident were 5 miles or 2000 ft. (at flight levels, above 18,000'.) Ergo, nothin to report, no loss of separation. :-)
Hey diogenes, you work at SoCal?
Yes she can...
Makes sense to me.
You Rang??
Sorry to bust your bubbles the report is correct. We don't use reel to reel tape anymore. All channels are recorded digitally then archived on DAT tapes. I work in a terminal and use a different system but am familiar with whats involved. A ARTCC will have approximately 2-300 radio frequencies recorded 24/7. We are not talking your basic Radio Shack system here. They also have 'Hot Lines' to every sector within the center and to all positions with the terminal facilities within their airspace which are recorded also. Also a few dial type telephone lines. Starting to get the picture. If not properly maintain it can and will come crashing down. Now, as to why they weren't done? I can hear some people packing bags as we speak.
Thank you.
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