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Philadelphia airport to move up on list for new radar system

By RON TODT The Associated Press 3/16/00 12:56 PM

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Philadelphia International Airport will be moved up on the priority list for a state-of-the-art air traffic control system, but the latest technology is still several years away, said Federal Aviation Administration officials and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter on Thursday.

Specter, R-Pa., and the FAA released the results of a preliminary investigation by an eight-person team into the cause of a failure of the automatic radar system March 10. Officials called the failure a series of three "scatters" over a 19-minute period caused by faulty system cards.

During each 12-second scatter and 4=-second recovery, planes still showed up on radar as blips on the screen but the system could not identify each aircraft, its altitude or speed. The problem was resolved after nine of the 500 system cards were replaced, officials said.

Although the system could not identify any of the 30 aircraft then in the air, officials insisted safety was not threatened. They said controllers could still see the planes and could talk to them to get them to identify themselves, and there was also a manual card list of each plane and its flight plan.

"The system here in Philadelphia is performing at a very high level. In fact, it's above what I would say is our national reliability and availability figures," said Steve Gallegos, deputy program director for operations at FAA headquarters in Washington, who is leading the investigative team.

Flight delays were caused when controllers delayed departures and put incoming aircraft into a holding pattern as a precaution, said Cathy Shema of the FAA air traffic planning and procedures office.

Specter said FAA administrator Jane Garvey had assured him that Philadelphia, until now ranked 42nd in priority for upgrading the system, would have a higher priority on a new list to be released in May.

"They're going to be looking at moving Philadelphia up significantly in the schedule," said Alan Moore, the FAA's acting director for airway facilities.

The current ARTS system was installed in Philadelphia in the early 1970s, although it has since been upgraded.

The FAA's newest system, called STARS, is being tried out in two smaller airports in Syracuse, N.Y., and El Paso, and will not be ready for installation in a major airport such as Philadelphia until 2002 or 2003. The system is currently being used in airports in other countries.

Moore said an upgraded system, called ARTS-3E, has been installed at four or five airports until the STARS system is ready, but there are no plans to put it into Philadelphia in the interim.

Specter, however, said he remained concerned about the system and would press for that upgrade, and would also see if the schedule for implementing the STARS system could be moved up.

"I intend to pursue that to see if we can have an improvement now," Specter said. "We've given them a ton of new money ... and if there's some way to speed it up, I'm going to push to see that it's speeded up."

The eight-member team will continue to examine the current system's hardware and software over the next few days, Moore said.

Philadelphia's radar system failed twice last year, prompting Specter to tour the control tower in June and push for new air traffic equipment at the airport.

"It's an uncomfortable feeling," said Danny Mullin, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association of Philadelphia. "It feels like you're going down the highway and you hit the brakes and they don't work. Sheer panic, then you try to get your head together and figure out what to do to separate the airplanes."

http://www.nj.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?j0100_AM_NJ--AirportProblems&&news&newsflash-newjersey

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 16, 2000

Answers

OH MY GOODNESS

Philadelphia is still on ARTS 3A? YIKES.

(translation: most big airports went to ARTS 3E, which was originally installed in NYC. It too is a 1970s/1980s vintage system, but it is a sight better than 3A).

-- Bud Hamilton (budham@hotmail.com), March 16, 2000.