Says FTI System To Blame

Well... at least it should still be under warranty.

Controllers working at the Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport's sparkling new control tower found themselves doing their jobs the old-fashioned way last week, when a telecommunications system at the new tower went down for four-and-a-half hours on the morning of June 8.

Officials with the Professional Airways Systems Specialists union said the incident caused three flight delays, as controllers resorted to faxing flight plans between the Peachtree City TRACON and the tower, and writing out flight information by hand... just like the good old days.

"The controllers had to use grease pencils to write on these plastic flight strips," said PASS regional vice president Dave Spero.

Spero says the failure is disquieting, as the Hartsfield tower is just over a month old... and what's worse, he told FCW.com this delay may be "just a small sample of what's to come."

Why does he say that? Because, PASS says, the outage was caused by a maintenance interruption to the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI) service... a system that also led to a radar outage during a switchover at Chicago's O'Hare last year.

What's worse, the Department of Transportation inspector general and lawmakers have questioned continuing the FTI program, as they say it's behind schedule... not living up to expectations... and, worse of all, is raising safety concerns the system was designed to ease.

FMI: www.pass.org, www.atlanta-airport.com/