Technician Pulls Plug On Air Traffic

A technician working on a faulty electrical component inadvertently shut down power to the radar and computer systems at an air traffic control center in Fort Worth on Tuesday, delaying hundreds of flights nationwide.

Air traffic controllers at the Fort Worth Air Route Traffic Control Center lost radio contact with as many as 250 airplanes for three seconds and were without radar for up to 12 minutes before a backup system was stabilized, officials said.

Beginning at 12:08 p.m., the main computer was down for almost two hours, robbing controllers of important flight information and safety features that allow them to reduce the distance between airplanes.

To maintain safety, the Federal Aviation Administration held more than 100 flights on the ground at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport for as long as 90 minutes.

Dozens of planes flying to other airports were diverted as far north as Kansas City, Mo., to avoid flying through the Fort Worth center’s airspace.

The center controls 162,000 square miles of airspace in a rectangular area that extends from western Louisiana to the New Mexico border and from just north of Waco to north of Oklahoma City.

“Certainly it is uncomfortable to have a situation like this occur, but the controllers did what they were paid to do and they kept the system safe,” said Charlie Bono, air traffic manager for the massive facility.

Nevertheless, FAA officials said it was one of the most serious outages in years.

Bono said there were no reports of near-collisions because controllers immediately reverted to their basic training, which allows them to track each aircraft through the use of paper “data strips” and radio communication.

Flights that normally must be kept five miles apart horizontally were separated by 20 miles, and departures from most Texas airports were either halted or seriously curtailed.

Bill Shedden, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association at the center, said the loss of radar “caused a lot of high blood pressure out on the floor” as about 100 air traffic controllers were suddenly rendered blind.

“To lose radar for two minutes is traumatic, but to lose it for 12 - well, I’ve been here for 14 years and it has never happened,” Shedden said.