Not to worry though there gonna scrap the system and replace it with a new one this fall. Oh and no plans fell from the sky, but that's not to say there weren't some close calls

Full story @http://www.bostonherald.com/bostonherald/lonw/logn07081999.htm

-- kevin (innxxs@yahoo.com), July 09, 1999

Answers

Boston Herald link

Thanks, Kevin. I heard this story reported on my local radio station this morning. The failure was attributed to "an unsupervised electrical worker accidentally disconnecting the power." It occurred to me that such an incident left a lot to be desired in airport security. It will be interesting to see if this continues to be reported as a computer failure or an accidental power interruption.

-- RUOK (RUOK@yesiam.com), July 09, 1999.

An FAA spokesman says this is "no big thing"?!?!?!?!

What happened to "we're 100% ready"?? The system is not scheduled to be replaced until this fall?!?!?

God, I need an Advil.

R.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), July 09, 1999.

Lots of bumbling idiots in the airport control areas these days...

This, from Fox newswire:

Gaffe knocks out radio service at Florida air center 4.30 a.m. ET (831 GMT) July 9, 1999

MIAMI (AP)  As technicians scrambled to restore communications between south Florida's main air traffic control center and jets, one controller watched helplessly as two radar blips crept toward each other.

The planes managed to avoid each other, but it was a harrowing 13 minutes after a construction worker accidentally knocked out power to the center's radio system Thursday morning and a backup system failed to take over.

"There was extreme potential for disaster here,'' said Jerry McArthur, who heads the National Air Traffic Controllers Association's Miami chapter.

The Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center is the main radar complex that controls and separates airplanes between Orlando and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

No mishaps occurred during the outage, Federal Aviation Administration officials said, thought some flights were delayed. Planes already approaching their destinations were placed in holding patterns until communications were restored.

Two jets flirted with disaster over central Florida as a Southwest Airlines flight nearly caught up with a Delta jet as both climbed toward the same altitude, McArthur said. The Southwest jet turned away and climbed higher, he said.

The FAA said it does not believe the two airliners breached federal separation standards, which call for planes to remain five miles apart horizontally and about 1,000 feet apart vertically.

The controller was so unnerved he filed a medical report for trauma, McArthur said.

The communications problem happened at 7:40 a.m. Thursday, when a worker accidentally bumped into an electrical switch, tripping a circuit breaker and cutting off power to the center's Voice Switching and Control System, the FAA said. The system allows controllers to talk to airplanes by radio and to other radar complexes on the ground.

As controllers worked to restore order, 14 planes were held on the ground at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and 37 planes were held at Miami International. Flights around the nation bound for south Florida were held at their gates, officials said.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), July 09, 1999.

But, see? The planes didn't actually collide. And what's this got to do with Y2K, anyway??

-- this is (what@polly.would_say), July 09, 1999.

Where there's smoke there's fire. sniff sniff (?)

-- kevin (innxxs@yahoo.com), July 09, 1999.

Ooops, my apologies. I was still drinking coffee and waking up when I heard the report on this...got the Boston story confused with the Miami story.

-- RUOK (RUOK@yesiam.com), July 09, 1999.

No Prob...... RUOK. Soon it may be the Minneapolis Story, Newark Story, Philadelphia Story,St Louis Story, Winston-Salem Story, San Deigo Story, Akron Story, San Antonio Story, Green-Bay Story, St Paul Story etc.,,,,,,,,,,Kinda spooky huh?

-- kevin (innxxs@yahoo.com), July 09, 1999.

It sure has been a bad year for the FAA so far..........

Link

The Boston area's main air traffic control center in New Hampshire was crippled for the second time in four days yesterday when a switching system in the aging main computer malfunctioned.

Air traffic controllers were forced to rely on a secondary backup system for about 25 minutes while the computer was shut down and restarted, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Arlene Salac said.

``It got pretty hairy there for a while,'' said Mike Blake, regional vice president for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

The Nashua facility known as the Boston Center controls the high-altitude airspace from Canada to New York for large jets leaving and approaching the Boston area or heading north on their way to Europe.

Hundreds of planes were in the center's coverage area at the time the computer had to be restarted, and FAA officials did not issue a nationwide ``ground stop'' that would have prevented other planes around the country from taking off for Boston, said William Johannes, NATCA president for the center.

But more than 130 planes in the Boston area were delayed from taking off for nearly half an hour, Blake said.

Johannes compared the incident to a computer outage last December that led to a near mid-air collision between two jumbo jets.

Controllers were forced to recreate much of the flight data for the planes in the air that was lost when the computer was restarted, he said.

``In this case, were there any close calls? I won't try to tell you that, but it was because of the expertise of people managing an unmanageable situation,'' he said.

Controllers knew something was wrong with the computer system hours before the switch failed, but there were no repair technicians who could fix the problem on duty at the time, Johannes added.

``They should have been able to correct it if the proper people were there,'' he said. ``It should not have gotten that far.''

The FAA's ``ancient'' computer equipment is ``hanging by a thread'' until a replacement system is put in place this fall, said Dick Sena, the Boston representative for the Professional Airway Systems Specialists, who repair and maintain the computers. Salac insisted the computer snafu was ``not a big thing.''

Officials have no indication the problem with the non-radar keyboard multiplexer was related to a lightning strike that hit the New Hampshire facility last Friday night, knocking out the main computer, she added.

That outage halted air traffic heading into or through the Boston center airspace for nearly three hours on the eve of the July 4th holiday weekend, causing a ripple of delays that lasted for hours.

-- Bob (bob@bob.bob), July 09, 1999.

So many stupid politicians have been trying to discredit us by using that stupid example "Planes won't fall from the sky" as if we are some kind of paranoid lunatics fearing an apocalyptic scenario. I really never believed anything like that would happen, but given the chaos at the FAA, it appears they may just have to eat their words after all.

The FAA disaster

-- @ (@@@.@), July 09, 1999.

Here's more on the Miami story:

Construction Worker Zaps Miami Air Control Center 1.32 a.m. ET (536 GMT) July 10, 1999

MIAMI  A construction worker bumped an electrical switch and shut down communications at a Miami air traffic center, causing controllers to lose radio contact with about 100 planes for 10 minutes, officials said Friday.

The incident Thursday at Miami Center, a regional control center that handles high-altitude traffic over parts of Florida, the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, did not endanger any planes, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said.

"We do not believe there was any near collision,'' she said.

But a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association called the incident "inexcusable'' because the worker should not have been in a high-security area without clearance, and a backup radio system failed.

Bergen said a contractor working on a drywall project in a communication and computer equipment room at Miami Center ''inadvertently'' tripped an electric switch that shut down power to communications in the control center, Bergen said.

"He was in an area they should not have been working in,'' she said.

A backup communications system returned to operation in 10 minutes but the center was not fully operational for three hours until 10:45 a.m. EDT, Bergen said.

Thirty-seven flights were delayed at Miami International Airport and 14 at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, but none by more than 35 minutes, she said.

Bergen said the renovation project was suspended and the FAA was investigating the incident.

Jerry McArthur, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association Miami chapter, said the worker was operating without clearance in a high-security area.

"What allowed it to occur was inexcusable,'' he said. "You have to have top-secret clearance in that area. He was working there apparently unsupervised.''

"He had no clue what he'd done and there was no one in the room to tell him what he'd done.''

Bergen said the FAA did not believe any planes breached U.S. aviation rules mandating that aircraft remain five miles (8 km) apart horizontally and 1,000 feet (305 meters) vertically.

But she said investigators were looking into whether a Southwest Airlines plane and a Delta Air Lines jet had come too close over Florida.

McArthur said the two planes flirted with danger as they climbed toward the same altitude. "It very well could have been a disastrous situation,'' he said. =========

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), July 10, 1999.

Okay - so one electric switch turned off power in one room - and the combined failures led to ATC disruption and loss of control.

But we are supposed to believe that: Koskinian's "Limited" "Local" and "Temporary" power outages next year will have no affect on post-Y2K operations of the national ATC systems, nor will any of these local failures have effect on the airrports, their flight control towes and centers, nor on the airport operations themselves, nor on the mid-flight navigation beacons and radars and relay towers and controllers ......

-- Robert A Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), July 12, 1999.