This is only a couple miles from our office. They had all the local
news choppers up in the air over it on Friday. I was surprised that it
didn't garner more national coverage. I guess since it wasn't the
terror threat of the day, it didn't get any traction. Just a
disgruntled employee. Even the first reports said it was not a
terrorist act.
On 9/29/2014 4:36 PM, Forrest Christian (List Account) via Af wrote:
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
<mailto: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.
