# Suspension of Chicago-area air service



## John Bredin (Sep 26, 2014)

Arson and attempted suicide this morning at the Aurora air traffic control center that directs flights into and out of both O'Hare and Midway, causing an evacuation of the controllers. Over 1300 flights cancelled, and air service "affected" for several hours. http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/26/travel/chicago-ohare-midway-flights-stopped/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 Older story: http://breakingnews.suntimes.com/chicago/all-flights-grounded-at-midway-ohare/

I'm a bit surprised this didn't get mentioned here earlier.


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## AmtrakBlue (Sep 26, 2014)

John Bredin said:


> Arson and attempted suicide this morning at the Aurora air traffic control center that directs flights into and out of both O'Hare and Midway, causing an evacuation of the controllers. Over 1300 flights cancelled, and air service "affected" for several hours. http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/26/travel/chicago-ohare-midway-flights-stopped/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 Older story: http://breakingnews.suntimes.com/chicago/all-flights-grounded-at-midway-ohare/
> 
> I'm a bit surprised this didn't get mentioned here earlier.


I had thought about it, but didn't get around to it. I'm also surprised it didn't get mentioned earlier.


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## OlympianHiawatha (Sep 26, 2014)

I would imagine within minutes of this happening every available Amtrak seat in and out of Chicago Sold Out. While ignorant travelers wandered around like cattle at the airport wondering what was going on, smart ones picked up the phone and called Amtrak!


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## jis (Sep 26, 2014)

And now they are sitting parked in the field somewhere in Indiana?  Juuust kidding.

BTW, the fire was at the enroute center in Aurora, so theoretically they could run some flights in and out of Chicago airports by routing them TRACON to TRACON or direct to some VOR until they could hand them to Minneapolis, Kansas City or Cleveland enroute centers. Indeed this is what they did in the afternoon. On Flightaware ou could see several flights flying below 14,000' to the edge of the Chicago enroute center's space. You see the enroute center controls space above 14,000' AFAIR. The TRACONs control space around airports below that.

Seriously FAA in Chicago needs to get a handle on this fire situation. First they had a fire in the Chicago TRACON center in Elgin and now this in Aurora!

Also because it was the enroute center, the effect was far beyond just access to Chicago area airports. Flights that were scheduled to fly through Chicago enroute airspace all had to be diverted around it thus congesting adjacent air spaces, causing flow control issues leading to ground holds at places far and wide like New York and San Francisco.


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## XHRTSP (Sep 26, 2014)

I brought a plane from Dayton to O'Hare super early this morning and landed just minutes before the shutdown. We were then suppose to fly to Raleigh and back, but instead got the rest of the day off.


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## MrFSS (Sep 26, 2014)

XHRTSP said:


> I brought a plane from Dayton to O'Hare super early this morning and landed just minutes before the shutdown. We were then suppose to fly to Raleigh and back, but instead got the rest of the day off.


 Did you go ride some trains?


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## AmtrakBlue (Sep 26, 2014)

MrFSS said:


> XHRTSP said:
> 
> 
> > I brought a plane from Dayton to O'Hare super early this morning and landed just minutes before the shutdown. We were then suppose to fly to Raleigh and back, but instead got the rest of the day off.
> ...


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## Green Maned Lion (Sep 27, 2014)

Dude this is plane stupid.


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## XHRTSP (Sep 27, 2014)

MrFSS said:


> Did you go ride some trains?


Does the Blue Line count?


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## AmtrakBlue (Sep 27, 2014)

XHRTSP said:


> MrFSS said:
> 
> 
> > Did you go ride some trains?
> ...


. Metal wheels touching metal rails? Yes.


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## railiner (Sep 28, 2014)

jis said:


> Seriously FAA in Chicago needs to get a handle on this fire situation. First they had a fire in the Chicago TRACON center in Elgin and now this in Aurora!


I agree. But this should serve as a "wake-up", of how easily our ATC, and indeed other essential utilities can be disabled either by natural or malevolent, man-made causes.

Besides better preventive methods, we shoud look for ways to backup our systems to insure that something like this will not shut down such major infrastructure.

Much like the various redundant systems on modern airliner's themselves....


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## XHRTSP (Sep 28, 2014)

The reality is that sometimes random shite happens, and you're not going to engineer your way out of it. Even with all that went down, ATC carried on and no flying metal contacted other flying metal. Planes were moving in and out of Chicago yesterday, I took one out to DEN, brought one in from YYZ, and my parents flew up from MSY to visit just fine. I think we got the best outcome we could hope for in this type of situation.


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## railiner (Sep 28, 2014)

Generally true....but tell that to the thousands who were seriously inconvenienced to say the least, and I think they might say "best outcome" is not good enough....we should always strive to do better....


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## jis (Sep 28, 2014)

railiner said:


> Generally true....but tell that to the thousands who were seriously inconvenienced to say the least, and I think they might say "best outcome" is not good enough....we should always strive to do better....


After that ask them how much more in ticket segment fees they are willing to pay to make the system so resilient that an event like this does not happen once in a few years even. The answer might surprise you..... not! There will be less than zero willingness to pay for such, since these events are so rare.
You cannot make the system completely fail safe short of shutting it down so that there is nothing left to fail. The question then is of mitigation of failures when they hapen and at what level of targeted resilience. As far as this goes, it seems to me we are just fine with the currently planned upgrades and modernization of the system and nothing additional needs to be done except for perhaps trying to keep crazy people away from the control centers to the best extent possible.


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## Green Maned Lion (Sep 28, 2014)

Listen, guys, it's like this. You live in New Jersey (I'm so sorry...) and you work in New York City. Let's assume that with no traffic and all lights in your favor you can make it to work in an hour. On the average day it takes you an hour and a half. So, since you don't want to be late what time do you leave for a 9:00 arrival?

Well if you leave at 8 you will almost always be late.

If you leave at 7:30 you will be late half the time.

If you leave at 7:00 you will rarely be late.

But on a really bad morning you might still be late if you leave at 6:00.

And if your car breaks down, you will be late if you leave at 5:00.

Now if you leave at 3 AM you will probably never be late.

Which time do you leave?


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## railiner (Sep 29, 2014)

jis said:


> railiner said:
> 
> 
> > Generally true....but tell that to the thousands who were seriously inconvenienced to say the least, and I think they might say "best outcome" is not good enough....we should always strive to do better....
> ...


Good point, but there may be ways to mitigate failures, without too much addtitional expense. I don't know the ATC system enough to offer any suggestions, but some might...

One way might be to split the air space into smaller area's, so that if one center is incapacitated, its coverage can be more easily divided up for the other's to handle in the interim...

That would cost more, but not sure how much.....


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## XHRTSP (Sep 29, 2014)

We'd spend billions to guard against this one thing that happens maybe once every few years, that in reality had less disruption than a typical hurricance or large winter storm that happen far more often...


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## amtrakwolverine (Sep 30, 2014)

I ended up changing my return flight home from the gathering. The original schedule was OAK-MDW-DTW via southwest airlines. I didn't like the other times for the flights that bypassed MDW or had more then 1 stop so checked to see what SFO had to offer and went with SFO-PHX-DTW. So I will be arriving into OAK but will be leaving from SFO. the flight up is DTW-PHX-OAK.


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