Ten Minutes of Chaos? D.C. Communications Failure

Things got hairy in airspace over Virginia this past week. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) (Web site: www.natca.org) says on Monday (October 13) a communications failure at the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center left controllers overseeing a particularly busy slice of airspace over Richmond, “scrambling in a chaotic situation to try to keep [flights] safe.” There were lots of delays.

NATCA attributes the problem to a ten-minute radio outage, the second such occurrence in the last few weeks.

The problem affected flights headed north from Florida to places such as New York LaGuardia (LGA), Newark Liberty International (EWR), and Philadelphia (PHL). To compensate for the failure, controllers employed emergency frequencies to reach some flights. In other instances, NATCA says they literally had to wait for pilots to realize something was wrong, and then find other frequencies to call Washington Center.

“A situation doesn't get much worse than that for us,” maintains Rich Santa, Washington Center NATCA Facility Representative. “It was mayhem.” He asserts controllers simply “don't have a high degree of confidence in our equipment.”

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Web site: www.faa.gov) continues to insist the air traffic control system is safe. It's important to note that NATCA and FAA have been embroiled in a sometimes-bitter labor dispute for some time now.

© Cheapflights Ltd Jerry Chandler