Smoke (fire?) at Chi-TRACON

Hey-oh!!! I say from the parking lot typing on my iphone
 
I'm sitting in the break room because of the ground stop. The life of a ramper

Sent from my LG-LS980 using Tapatalk
 
Someone must have put mustard on a hot dog.
 
I read that a U-2 flying over FL600 over loaded the system and caused the fire.
 
Of corse the plane I'm supposed to take was just about to leave KORD when it happened, so now now I get the pleasure of sitting at KSTL for several hours... And delay my routes tomorrow for required rest... :mad2:
 
ScottM said:
That would be the right thing to do. Only time the universe gets upset is when they put ketchup on one.
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You Chicago-ans are all bassackwards.
 
So are there no back-up plans for controlling traffic in a situation like this when a facility goes off-line? Let KORD tower hold on to them a little longer, then send 'em directly over to ZAU. Sure, it's slower and less efficient, but you'd keep things moving and not have as many delays and cancellations...
 
HighFlyingA380 said:
So are there no back-up plans for controlling traffic in a situation like this when a facility goes off-line? Let KORD tower hold on to them a little longer, then send 'em directly over to ZAU. Sure, it's slower and less efficient, but you'd keep things moving and not have as many delays and cancellations...
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That's what they are currently doing. However the departing flights are having a hard time contacting center. Right now the tower is holding all departures besides two flights. Center is having to alternate back and forth between Midway and O'Hare. The TWR guy is saying that their having to maintain a huge in trail spacing of the departures.
 
This seems like the classic case of "failure to plan is planning to fail".

You'd think with the millions of dollars these kinds of delays can cost, they might want to practice this scenario once in awhile. Who'd-a-thunk that a room full of ancient electronics might have a "smoke event" at some point.
 
Minor impact here (so far)



Below is a list of reported flight delays and cancellations at LAX due to this incident:

-American Airlines = 8 Cancelled, 2 Delayed

-United Airlines = 2 Cancelled, 4 Delayed

-Southwest Airlines = 1 Cancelled, 0 Delayed

-Spirit Airlines = 0 Cancelled, 1 Delayed

-Virgin America = 0 Cancelled, 1 Delay
 
They just started a departure release.

20 mile in trail separation. :eek:
 
I don't think we've seen the BEGINNING of the delays yet. Right now there are nobody departing ORD. Some are shuffling around the airport, but except for a couple of pathfinders, they are not departing anybody. The theory is that soon ZAU may take some departures rotating between ORD and MDW.

It's only a matter of time before things push back against the other airports in the system and then crews start timing out and things like that.
 
flyingron said:
I don't think we've seen the BEGINNING of the delays yet. Right now there are nobody departing ORD. Some are shuffling around the airport, but except for a couple of pathfinders, they are not departing anybody. The theory is that soon ZAU may take some departures rotating between ORD and MDW.

It's only a matter of time before things push back against the other airports in the system and then crews start timing out and things like that.
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Got to it before you. :D

Your theory is correct. They have been doing that for awhile but only got two flights out. They are currently starting up their release program. However, it's a 20 mile in trail separation.

TWR is saying roughly a 5 min wait between each departure.
 
You just don't understand.

A fire at O'Hare is not like a fire at Atlanta, LAX, or New York. They just don't have the combustibles that O'Hare has.
 
Was there serious damage from the fire, or is this just a glorified fire drill?

(Ie how long should we expect this to go on?)
 
I read a bathroom vent fire caused the sprinkler system to go off.
 
They should be back in the building by now then.
 
from Suntimes:

Elgin Fire Capt. Anthony Bialek said a motor in a bathroom ceiling fan at the air traffic facility had burned up, sending smoke into the building’s heating and air conditioning system.

Once in that system, Bialek said, “It blew all over the place. That’s why they had trouble finding it.’’

Bialek said he believed the fan was in the women’s bathroom, and he did not know how far it was from where air traffic controllers work. But finding the source of the smoke was not easy, he said.

“We don’t want to damage stuff in there, so we were being very careful, taking our time,’’ Bialek said. “They never had any flames or heavy smoke, it was just light smoke and they were like, `Where is this coming from?’ ‘’
 
Things were moving around 5PM when I finally got tired of listening. There was still a lot of back log. Apparently United decided to shutdown everything and deplane at one point.
 
comanchepilot said:
Obviously you have never eaten a hot dog in Illinois - they [disgustingly] use ketchup.
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Weird. I've spent most of my life in the Chicago area and I've never seen ketchup on a hot dog except by special request. Hell, Portillo's alone does $300M in business and their hot dogs are ketchup free.
 
comanchepilot said:
Obviously you have never eaten a hot dog in Illinois - they [disgustingly] use ketchup.
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I do my best to spend as little time and money in Illinois as possible. It's worked out for me pretty well.
 
Hank S said:
The only good thing to come out of Chicago is the Chicago Dog, complete with lettuce and a sport pepper.
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I don't know what you think you've been eating, but it wasn't a Chicago Dog.
 
HighFlyingA380 said:
So are there no back-up plans for controlling traffic in a situation like this when a facility goes off-line? Let KORD tower hold on to them a little longer, then send 'em directly over to ZAU. Sure, it's slower and less efficient, but you'd keep things moving and not have as many delays and cancellations...
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Normally that would have been done. But I heard EdFred was getting FF in the bravo today and that mucked up their entire plan!

So it is really Ed's fault! :yes::D
 
Nope. That's gonna be Friday! (Assuming weather holds out for me.)
 
HighFlyingA380 said:
So are there no back-up plans for controlling traffic in a situation like this when a facility goes off-line? Let KORD tower hold on to them a little longer, then send 'em directly over to ZAU. Sure, it's slower and less efficient, but you'd keep things moving and not have as many delays and cancellations...
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Works well if the frequencies overlap. They normally don't though. At my approach I guarantee there are normal departures that can't hear center until they're above 10,000 feet AGL. No offense to tower controllers, but I wouldn't want most of them vectoring any more than most people here want me working a busy VFR pattern. Legal ramifications aside it isn't exactly best practice.

Several C90 controllers did drive to ZAU to resume limited operations and do better than the contingency FWIW.
 
Out of curiosity, could they have jacked in at KDPA, KUGN or KPWK, or for that matter KORD - at least a closer drive than Chicago Center? I thought the systems were linked to some degree. Or is it that the frequencies just wouldn't be possible?
 
Eh? It's about 30 miles down either SR-31 or Randall road from C90 to ZAU.

It's a longer drive to ORD (in worse traffic) or PWK. UGH is twice as far away. DPA is closer, but what are they going to "plug in to". One brite display and no radio?
 
Frequencies and land lines would be a limiting factor for sure. Another limitation in general is that towers generally don't have any scope surplus, not to mention most class d towers displays aren't certified for much other than situational awareness.
 
Setting up the ability to remotely control systems in "dark" sites is child's play in modern IT.

The fact that FAA can't figure out how to remotely operate their gear is pretty telling.

It isn't even that expensive considering this is a life-safety system.

Remoting radios, computers, etc. Not a big deal at all if planned and built accordingly.

Tower ops? Yeah. You need somewhere to send the controllers that need to look out a window. TRACON? Hell... Centralize it. Four or five BIG regional buildings backing each other up could handle it all. Already works for Centers. (And Centers could back each other up better than they do today also.)

The expensive part is having enough qualified controllers at any particular location. The IT part is the easy part.
 
Nate, money is exactly the reason why your idea, though a great one, isn't feasible. Setting up a remote backup system costs a LOT of money, when you consider that you have to maintain that remote facility 24/7, and keep it certified for service. Not to mention personnel costs to maintain the equipment. Sure, the IT part would be easy, if you had money.

That's why ATC uses its current method of failure recovery. When one facility goes loses all air traffic control capability, it declares ATC Zero. It doesn't happen often, and almost always makes the news. There are contingency plans in place where other facilities take over the airspace and subsequently the traffic for the affected facility. In the case of C90, the contingency plan worked as prescribed. That's no small feat considering this contingency plan, as well as many others across the nation, had never been used before with live traffic. Operations to ORD and MDW resumed shortly after initial evacuation, albeit at a much reduced rate. Normal ATC operations resumed about four hours after initial evacuation.
 
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