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So one unhappy employee manages to sabotage a major air traffic control center in Illinois which grounds flights in the Chicago area with a ripple effect to the Midwest and across the USA. How is this possible that there are not back-up systems in this age of anti-terrorism (although this wasn't an act of terror)? Anyone here effected by this situation?
So, you think there should be fully staffed back-up ATC facilities across the nation? That would entail a massive building program, double the budget for the FAA and still wouldn't ensure that terrorist couldn't take out a facility and its back-up.
Location: About 10 miles north of Pittsburgh International
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How is this possible that there are not back-up systems
Backup systems cost money, and very robust backup systems cost lots of money.
Quote:
So, you think there should be fully staffed back-up ATC facilities across the
nation? That would entail a massive building program, double the budget for the
FAA and still wouldn't ensure that terrorist couldn't take out a facility and
its back-up.
If the FAA thought they could pull it off, they'd run the entire NAS from a single laptop stashed away in a broom closet of 800 Independence Ave. We're probably a few generations away from that, but somewhere between there and fully staffed backup facilities, there is a happy medium. Yesterday's event showed that, clearly, we're not at that happy medium. Somewhere along the way, the FAA confused being cheap with being responsible.
They have a contingency plan. Not as good as a backup, but still a plan. Traffic control was shifted to neighboring facilities. But that takes time and it reduces the effective capacity. Flights are getting in and out of the region now, but I doubt they are back to 100% yet.
I flew in last night from the Atlanta area in my little 4-seater. As of last night they still weren't providing radar services in the Chicago area.
My Guess is within Hours of the shutdown, the FAA had the ZAU Controllers on buses to the other centers to assist and control the ZAU AirSpace for flight into/out of it, so they could get passed to the TRACOM's or the Towers.
Years ago I went on a tour of that center. They emphasized how secure it was. Far enough from OHare that no one nuclear device could take out both, redundant power systems, multiple phone lines. But they didn't consider some crazy insider taking it down.
So one unhappy employee manages to sabotage a major air traffic control center in Illinois which grounds flights in the Chicago area with a ripple effect to the Midwest and across the USA. How is this possible that there are not back-up systems in this age of anti-terrorism (although this wasn't an act of terror)? Anyone here effected by this situation?
Reps to you, Chava. I looked for a story on this yesterday on several different CD forums, and I did not see any. My daughter is moving to China, and it affected her. She was at EWR yesterday morning, about to board for Chicago where she would catch a flight to Shanghai, and they had everyone who had already boarded get off the plane, telling them that there were no flights in or out of Chicago.
They got her on a flight to San Francisco, but it got in too late for her to make the Shanghai flight, so United put them in a hotel last night and she was on standby for a flight today and got on. She's currently in the air, past the halfway mark to Shanghai, but she should have been there 24 hours ago. Her bags have been there since yesterday.
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