New Radar Puts Jetliners In Jeopardy

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

COMPUTERS WORRY AIR CONTROLLERS NEW RADAR PUTS JETLINERS IN JEOPARDY, UNION SAYS By Jon Hilkevitch

Tribune Transportation Writer

October 29, 1998

New radar-tracking computers that guide commercial airliners in the Chicago area have misidentified the location and speed of planes in crowded skies near O'Hare International Airport and they lack reliable back-up systems, the union representing air-traffic controllers said Wednesday.

The controllers cited several instances in recent weeks in which radar equipment at O'Hare, Elgin and Tinley Park momentarily failed, planes allegedly were forced to take evasive action to avoid collisions and controller workloads were overstressed--although the union officials provided incomplete documentation and acknowledged that they could not provide a cause-and-effect link to the occurrences.

The Federal Aviation Administration strongly disputed the union's allegations that airline passengers are being treated as "guinea pigs" while problems inevitable with new technology are being addressed at the region's radar approach-and-departure facility in Elgin.

But an agency spokesman did say, "There are some software-related wrinkles that still need to be ironed out in the coming weeks, although the system has been certified as safe and FAA headquarters reiterated to me today that we will stick with the program."

Part of the FAA's reason for shifting over the summer to the new technology, which is also being used in Denver, Dallas and New York City, is that efforts are being made to make it compatible with the Year 2000 (Y2K) computer fix that the FAA is working on. The system it replaced two months ago is not immune from the Y2K bug, officials said.

The FAA also agreed with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association that errors involving aircraft flying too close to each other have increased in the Chicago region and nationwide this year. The two sides, however, were at odds regarding an explanation.

The controllers association says the operational errors have increased 30 percent this year at the Chicago Center in Aurora. Outside a 40-mile radius of O'Hare, the Aurora center receives and hands off long-range air traffic departing from and arriving at O'Hare, Midway and smaller regional airports.

An FAA spokesman, Don Zochert, could not provide statistics on the rise in errors at Chicago Center, which he attributed primarily to controller mistakes.

After the union took its concerns to the media Wednesday, it was announced that the FAA and controllers association officials would meet in Chicago Thursday to discuss equipment and safety issues.

One of the more heated points of contention involves an updated version of computer software in use since August by controllers at the FAA facility in Elgin that is responsible for keeping safe distances between airplanes within a 40-mile radius of O'Hare.

The technology, called the Automated Radar Terminal System III-E Version 6.05, provides the identity, air speed and other vital data about aircraft in a controller's assigned sector. But Kurt Granger, the controllers association's president in Elgin, said, "We are experiencing numerous instances of the computer completely dropping critical flight information . . . and the FAA has decided to gamble."

Saying the FAA has "lost the bet," Granger cited an Oct. 24 incident in which the new radar tracking system failed momentarily and forced a pilot to take abrupt action to avoid a collision aloft.

Neither Granger nor Ron Downen, controllers association president at Chicago Center, could provide details of that incident or two other alleged close calls, over Danville on Sept. 17 and Marion, Ind., on Oct. 23. FAA officials would not comment Wednesday.

When the FAA and controllers association meet Thursday, they are also expected to discuss the future of FAA testing already under way that is a precursor to the next generation of air traffic control, called Free Flight. Under Free Flight, the air lanes in the nation's skies will be greatly expanded to give airlines more freedom in selecting routes. Air-traffic controllers, who play a traffic cop role directing aircraft, will be increasingly supplanted by technology that provides a "safety bubble" around each plane, monitoring air traffic but basically playing a passive role unless the pilots of aircraft on a collision course fail to correct the conflict themselves.

http://chicagotribune.com/version1/article/0,1575,SAV-9810290173,00.html



-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), October 29, 1998

Answers

Kinda makes you want to rush out and fly to Chicago.

-- not me (up@upand.away), October 30, 1998.

Gonna dust of my Y2K Compliant Moccasins, get me a mountain bike, and try to travel away from flight paths.

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), October 31, 1998.

Notice that (in their bureacratic wisdom) they said the folowing:

The Federal Aviation Administration strongly disputed the union's allegations that airline passengers are being treated as "guinea pigs" while problems inevitable with new technology are being addressed at the region's radar approach-and-departure facility in Elgin.

But an agency spokesman did say, "There are some software-related wrinkles that still need to be ironed out in the coming weeks, although the system has been certified as safe and FAA headquarters reiterated to me today that we will stick with the program."

They did not say " The system IS safe."

A ceritifed system is only one that has a certificate. In general, this means that an official, in his official capacity as an official, has stated examed the thing under review and has decided that the thing meets the criteria deined by the official system (to the level that the review requires).

Said officials can be wrong, and sometimes are wrong.

You hope this means "it is safe" and that "we didn't rush to implement the system because of department pressure", but that isn't what the official said. What he said was "It is certified."

By the way, is this DOT spokeman going to continually fly in and out of Chicago to prove his opinion?

Can anybody forward this opinion to the controllers at Chicago for me? I know people who operated missiles out of Saudi Arabia, and a software change in the control systems there (written during the Gulf War, was hastily loaded at the direct requirement of DOD higher-ups). this software change (obviously not fully tested until installed) was implicated by the technicians involved in the one missile that did get through and hit the barracks.

The technicians pulled the new program, reloaded the old one, and no other missiles got through.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), October 31, 1998.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ