Marines called in to relieve Palm Springs airport radar crisis with military fix PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (AP) -- Marines have been called in to set up temporary military radar at Palm Springs International Airport, which has been plagued by a faulty system shut down three weeks ago because it wasn't detecting air traffic. Marine Corps specialists were at the airport Friday to select a location for the mobile radar facility, which was expected to be operational Monday, said Curtis Warren, local National Air Traffic Controllers Association spokesman.

The airport has been without radar since Dec. 19, when chronic problems led Federal Aviation Administration technicians to shut it down for repairs.

The balky radar, described by Warren as "a hodgepodge of cast off systems, covers a 30-mile radius.

"Much to the FAA's credit, they've called in the military and circumvented the entire procurement process and brought in the Marines," Warren said.

A 25-member FAA technical team spent eight days examining the radar facility five miles away from the airport and determined it was unreliable and couldn't be fixed.

"We were actually dropping targets, they're jumping, vanishing and altitudes are changing on us," Warren said.

Controllers, who have been spreading out traffic flying into the Coachella Valley 110 miles east of Los Angeles, have complained about close calls in the skies near the airport.

"Some missed between 100 to 300 feet," said Warren, who represents the 26 controllers at the airport. "It's the kind of separation that would get an air traffic controller suspended from duty.

"With radar at any one time we're talking to approximately 20 planes. In the non-radar situation, we're only talking to three or four planes, meaning 17 others are on their own."

Aircraft in the Palm Springs area must now stay 30 miles apart horizontally, the FAA said. The separation is normally three miles horizontally and 1,000 feet apart vertically.

Michael Lenick, the FAA manager of traffic for the airport, has said it was still safe to fly out of Palm Springs because controllers are trained in non-radar routing.

But Warren said the terminal's controllers are currently "blind" to any traffic below 8,000 feet, and they are maintaining most direction by sight and radio communication.

Lenick wouldn't discuss the arrival of the Marines, referring calls to FAA spokeswoman Kirsty Dunn at the agency's regional headquarters in Seattle.

"We are going to have a U.S. Marine Corps unit installed to supplement air traffic operations while the FAA evaluates the reliability of a replacement beacon," Dunn said.

That beacon, part of a secondary radar system, was expected to arrive late Friday and it will take several weeks to get it operational. The temporary military radar will be operational Monday.

"We want to assure the reliability of the replacement beacon, which is a more powerful beacon for the secondary system," Dunn said. "It boosts the radar's capability to overcome interference problems."

The FAA has refused to replace the failed primary system despite more than two years of complaints and repair attempts, Warren said.

A state-of-the-art system and control tower to replace the airport's 40-year-old facility would cost $30 million, he said.

Doyle Bordelon, spokesman for the FAA's national technical center, agreed earlier with Warren's assessment of the current Palm Springs radar.

"Mr. Warren is not out of line," Bordelon said. "We're working very closely, he's raising valid issues, and we're working as a team."

The FAA complains it doesn't have the money and Palm Springs is perceived as a small market that doesn't need a sophisticated system, the controllers union spokesman said. The airport handles 1.3 million passengers annually.

Radar was first installed in the Coachella Valley in 1979 after the air crash death of Frank Sinatra's mother, Dolly. Sinatra, who lived in Palm Springs, lobbied for the airport radar.

"It worked fine until they erected huge windmills that canceled out some of the radar returns," Warren said. "Targets were vanishing and dropping (off the radar).

"For $30 million we could provide the valley with the kind of safe air traffic enjoyed by every other metropolitan area in the country."

http://www.sacbee.com/news/calreport/calrep_story.cgi?N162.HTML

-- Rick (rick@wmrs.edu), January 08, 2000

Answers

Maybe they would have the 30 million to replace the dangerous, life threatening, old system if the FAA didn't have to spend millions more trying to track down non existant non-compliant embedded chips.

But, even after being told there were not any embedded chips with Y2K problems, social pressure caused them to look for them anyway, no matter what the cost. One accident... just one, because the money was not spent where it should have been.

If lives are lost because some "Y2K consultant" decided to hype up intigrated circuits, he knew absolutly nothing about and guessed that there were 20 million that would fail. His company could make lots of money, he could rake it in too speaking at $2,000.00 a head seminars hyping up embedded, just to laugh afterwords admitting he set exagerated for the sole purpose of scaring them. And this was before it was discovered the problem wasn't as bad as he "guessed" it was.

But whats the harm??

Of all the news that is hyped as Y2K problems without any kind of proof, and here is a real danger, airports have had their radar systems crashing since last summer causing real dangers!

Go through the archives here, there are lots of posts about ATC radars crashing.

-- Cherri (Sams@brigadoon.com), January 08, 2000.

""Much to the FAA's credit, they've called in the military and circumvented the entire procurement process and brought in the Marines," Warren said. ...The FAA has refused to replace the failed primary system despite more than two years of complaints and repair attempts, Warren said. "

Any American who is not outraged should be deported! We've been had.

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 08, 2000.

IBM told the FAA YEARS ago to dump their old systems and buy new ones, long, long before the dreaded "Y2K" became an issue.

For all the money our government spent bombing Kosovo, a completely new FAA system could have been bought and paid for many times over. Funny, how there's always money to make war, but not for public safety. The problems experienced now are just classic fix-on- failure and it's been this way for years. Maybe Y2K will have some positive effect: they will be forced to trash the old system once and for all and get one that actually works.

-- Mary (marriedto@aviationCEO.com), January 08, 2000.

Its the windmills, stupid.

-- Rick (rick@wmrs.edu), January 08, 2000.

It would be interesting to hear from the people on this board who fly the big commerical passenger jets or the cargo planes. I know you are out there- I have been lurking and posting on occasion since Nov 1998. I am trying to keep a open mind on this one. I learned how to fly during the years when Ronald fired all of the ATC controlers.

-- Bill (sticky@2sides.tape), January 08, 2000.

news at 11:00 radar picks up budweiser frogs.Plane is ignored

just kidding

-- davebullis (davebullis@aol.com), January 08, 2000.