Oh yeah, I'm in Chicago for a few days. Flew in on thursday before this happened. My wife flew in on Saturday and ended up with a nasty delay in MSP since there were very very few flights flying into the affected area, which basically includes both chicago airports, and the two airports up in wisconsin. Thousands of flights cancelled over the last couple of days.
That's the big news here. -forrest On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Eric Kuhnke via Af <af@afmug.com> wrote: > Anyone see this? > > > http://posttrib.suntimes.com/30167722-537/flight-delays-to-continue-after-arson.html#.VCnNuOeXtGE > > > http://www.metafilter.com/143174/ATCSCC-ADVZY-020-DCC-ZAU-09-26-2014-ZAU-GROUND-STOP > > > > On Friday, ATCSCC Advisory 20 of 26-Sep-2014 went out. When operators, > controllers and airport managers saw the title, a gasp of disbelief was > heard. The problem was simple enough to state in three words, and complex > enough to cancel thousand of flights and cost hundred of millions of > dollars: ZAU ATC ZERO > <http://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_otherdis.jsp?advn=20&adv_date=09262014&facId=DCC/ZAU&title=ZAU+GROUND+STOP&titleDate=09/26/14> > . > > ZAU > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Air_Route_Traffic_Control_Center> > is the call sign of the Chicago Air Rout Traffic Control Center (ARTCC), > which covers <http://www.fly.faa.gov/Information/west/zau/zau.htm> > northern Illinois and Indiana, southern Wisconsin, western Iowa, and south > eastern Michigan. There are two "sides" at an ARTCC. ZAU-LO handed traffic > destined for airports in the covered area, ZAU-HI handled traffic > overflying. Both were amongst the busiest in the country. ZAU-HI was busy > with traffic from the east to west, as well as European traffic heading to > Houston and Dallas-FW, ZAU-LO had to feed in traffic from airports like > GYY <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary/Chicago_International_Airport>, MKE > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Mitchell_International_Airport>, RFD > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Rockford_International_Airport>, PIA > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Wayne_A._Downing_Peoria_International_Airport>, > and the two busiest airports in the area; Chicago Midway International > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Midway_International_Airport> and O'Hare > International > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Hare_International_Airport>, one of the > busiest airports in the world. > > On Friday morning, Brian Howard, a contract employee of the FAA and > holding full credentials to the ZAU datacenters, set a fire in the telecom > room, destroying 23 of the 29 > <http://posttrib.suntimes.com/30167722-537/flight-delays-to-continue-after-arson.html> > rack and disconnecting all the controller stations from the associated > radars and radio transmitters needed to watch and guide traffic through the > busy sector. As the consoles dropped offline, the ZAU duty manager had no > choice -- they called ZZZ, the FAA command center > <http://www.fly.faa.gov/flyfaa/usmap.jsp> and reported ATC ZERO -- no > controllers available, control center offline. >
