Air Traffic Control Goes Blank Technician’s Goof Causes Massive Outage In Regional Control Center
A technician’s error caused a power outage that shut down a federal air traffic control center early Saturday and delayed takeoffs and landings throughout the Pacific Northwest, according to a preliminary report obtained by The Associated Press.
The outage affected at least 50 aircraft flying over the Pacific Northwest and caused an unknown number of flight delays on the ground, the FAA said. There were no immediate reports of aircraft placed in jeopardy.
The control center has an emergency power system, but it did not engage, the FAA said.
During the outage, Seattle controllers did not have radio or radar contact with aircraft in the 286,000-square-mile region.
Flights in Spokane were delayed because of the outage, but FAA officials were not certain how many were affected.
The outage was the latest in a series of communications problems that have plagued FAA facilities over the past year.
The FAA’s Air Route Traffic Control Center in suburban Auburn “lost all critical power and commercial telephone” at 6:53 a.m., according to the preliminary FAA “significant equipment outage report” provided to the AP by the air traffic controllers union.
Critical electricity was not restored for another three minutes, and the center’s telephones were out for six minutes. Emergency backup radar was not available for use until 7 a.m., the report said.
“We were completely in the dark for at least five and more like six minutes,” said Paul Cox, a controller and union representative for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.
Although limited radio contact was re-established within minutes, the report indicated the center’s main radio and communications system was not fully operational until 8:38 a.m., and all systems were not back to normal until 9:32 a.m.
FAA spokesman Mitch Barker said controllers at other FAA centers were able to take over responsibility for the planes. Radar and radio at individual airports, including Seattle and Portland, and an intermediate system called Terminal Radar Approach Control, or TRACON, remained in service.
FAA officials initially said an electrical failure occurred, and released a statement from FAA Administrator David R. Hinson saying the agency “is working aggressively to minimize the impact of power interruptions on the system.”
However, Barker later would characterize the outage only as a “service interruption” and said the cause remained under investigation.
The preliminary FAA report said a “critical power outage occurred while performing preventive maintenance of system.”
Cox, who arrived at work at 9 a.m., said FAA officials told him in a briefing that a technician was working on a critical unit that controls and conditions the electricity that powers the center.
Cox said he was told the technician, who was just finishing an overnight shift, thought he was working on a standby unit, but instead removed a circuit board from the unit in service. Power failed when the tech tried to plug the board back in, Cox said.
Airplanes in the Northwest were delayed en route or in taking off and landing. Other aircraft were diverted around the air space normally covered by the Seattle center.
Jeff Fitch, general manager of airport operations at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, confirmed that no emergencies occurred at the airport, the region’s largest. He said there was only a brief period when no airplanes could arrive or depart, and airport schedules returned to normal by mid-morning.
The biggest problem, Fitch said, was a delay in entering flight plans into FAA computers.
The FAA’s air traffic control system “is built with the assumption that they will never lose power,” Cox said, and that critical systems always will have battery and emergency generator power available. However, the unit being worked on controls the switchover to backup power, he said.
Nationwide, the FAA’s air traffic control system has had at least a dozen power outages or computer failures during the past year, including at least five failures at the FAA’s Midwest control center outside Chicago.
On Aug. 7, the FAA’s Fremont, Calif., center had an hour-long radar outage, during which time two jets flying over Stockton, Calif., came within 1-1/2 miles of each other and a third jet strayed more than 100 miles off course.
“It’s happened in the past, it’s happened again and that’s given us the expectation that it will happen in the future, even though it’s not supposed to,” Cox said.
In June, the Auburn center became the first of 21 regional FAA centers to receive a $1.4 billion computerized communications system. On Aug. 16, the center lost communications with aircraft for a few seconds because of a software glitch, but the controller on duty quickly switched to a backup.
Cox said Saturday’s power failure was not due to the new computer gear.
Cox said the Seattle center has fewer technicians than two or three years ago, but they have to maintain more equipment.
“There’s more to it than that a guy screwed up,” he said. “The system led him to screw up, is what I’m saying.”
xxxx CONTROL CENTER The Seattle center controls commercial aircraft and other planes flying on instrument flight rules outside of metropolitan areas in Washington, most of Oregon, North Idaho and extreme western Montana, and part of Northern California.