Green Energy
From Associated Press:
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - Communications equipment failed Tuesday at a regional air-traffic control center, shutting down all airline traffic within 250 miles of Memphis and causing a ripple effect across the country that grounded dozens of passenger and cargo flights.
The problem started when a major telephone line to the Memphis center went out at 12:35 p.m. EST. The Federal Aviation Administration said air-traffic control operations were back to normal about three hours later.
Air-traffic control centers in adjacent regions handled flights that were already in the air when the problem was discovered.
"The airspace was completely cleared by 1:30 (p.m.) Eastern time," FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said.
High-altitude flights through the region - which includes parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee - were discontinued while the equipment was being fixed.
"What we did is put a ground stop in place for any flight that would transition through that airspace. We held them on the ground wherever they were, whether it was Miami, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston," Bergen said.
The FAA's action had a ripple effect in several airports.
Brown said the outage affected the center's ability to talk to flights passing through its airspace and to other air traffic control facilities.
National Air Traffic Controllers union spokesman Doug Church called the outage a major safety problem. He said controllers had to use their personal cell phones to talk to other air-traffic control centers.
Brown would not comment on the union statement. She had no further details about the cause of the outage, including which telephone company operates the line that was lost.
The Memphis center is one of 20 air-traffic control facilities around the country. It handled almost 3 million flights last year, ranking it ninth among the 20.
"It's a big airspace, and there are lots of airplanes," Bergen said.
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Green Energy
Air Traffic Radar, Radio Outage Hits Flights
From Associated Press:
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - Communications equipment failed Tuesday at a regional air-traffic control center, shutting down all airline traffic within 250 miles of Memphis and causing a ripple effect across the country that grounded dozens of passenger and cargo flights.
The problem started when a major telephone line to the Memphis center went out at 12:35 p.m. EST. The Federal Aviation Administration said air-traffic control operations were back to normal about three hours later.
Air-traffic control centers in adjacent regions handled flights that were already in the air when the problem was discovered.
"The airspace was completely cleared by 1:30 (p.m.) Eastern time," FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said.
High-altitude flights through the region - which includes parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee - were discontinued while the equipment was being fixed.
"What we did is put a ground stop in place for any flight that would transition through that airspace. We held them on the ground wherever they were, whether it was Miami, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston," Bergen said.
The FAA's action had a ripple effect in several airports.
Brown said the outage affected the center's ability to talk to flights passing through its airspace and to other air traffic control facilities.
National Air Traffic Controllers union spokesman Doug Church called the outage a major safety problem. He said controllers had to use their personal cell phones to talk to other air-traffic control centers.
Brown would not comment on the union statement. She had no further details about the cause of the outage, including which telephone company operates the line that was lost.
The Memphis center is one of 20 air-traffic control facilities around the country. It handled almost 3 million flights last year, ranking it ninth among the 20.
"It's a big airspace, and there are lots of airplanes," Bergen said.
- Egypt Air Pilot Who Caused Near-collision At Jfk Made Two Big Mistakes
Not only did he turn in the wrong direction, he also crossed a "hold line" he had been instructed to say behind: NEW YORK – A pilot of a jet carrying 286 passengers slammed on the brakes to abort takeoff at Kennedy Airport this week after another plane...
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From the Telegraph and Argus: Radio hoaxers putting lives at risk with fake air traffic calls at Leeds Bradford Airport Pirate broadcasters have been risking lives by posing as air crew and sending bogus messages to air traffic controllers at Leeds-Bradford...
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Acting on orders from the Communications Ministry, the IDF has shut down an illegal BBC transmitter in Hebron that was transmitting on a frequency allocated to it by the 'Palestinian Authority' that interfered with air traffic control at Ben Gurion...
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No details are being released yet, but I'm sure it has nothing to do with terrorism: AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Two Dutch fighter planes accompanied a U.S. Northwest Airlines plane bound for Mumbai back to Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on Wednesday,...
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Dearborn, Michigan has highest concentration of Muslims of any city in the United States, which, of course, doesn't mean we ought to be worried about any terrorism plots being hatched within it's boundaries. No, nothing to worry about: Two men...