Outage Lasts Close To Two Hours

Controllers briefly lost radar contact this week with flights within a 45-square-mile block of Southern California airspace.

According to the Los Angeles Times, San Diego ATC controllers had their hands full when new telecommunications equipment malfunctioned early Wednesday, delaying 14 flights out of Ontario International Airport. The outage lasted nearly two hours.

Authorities blamed the incident on excessive static over a high-speed telephone line, which caused the system to attempt the switch to an alternative piece of equipment. The system was unable to make the connection. Controllers in the giant San Diego air traffic control facility handle flights between airports in Southern California, from the ground to 15,000 feet.

Controllers almost immediately switched to an alternate system until technicians could fix the problem, said FAA spokesman Ian Gregor. Safety was not compromised during the outage, he said.

"We lost a large number of radio frequencies, as well as the radar feed," Gregor said. "The problem has been fixed, so it won't happen again."

Not everyone agrees with those assurances, however... especially those technicians who maintain FAA systems. They claim that the telecommunications equipment also known as the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure, or FTI, contains design flaws that have contributed to outages at ATC facilities nationally.

On Tuesday, 71 flights were delayed and 25 were diverted during an FTI system outage at an FAA center that handles flights around Salt Lake City.

"I'm concerned that there are known problems in the system that are only being exposed when there are failures," said Joan Matthiesen, a regional assistant for Professional Airways Systems Specialists, the union that represents FAA technicians.

FMI: www.faa.gov