PowerPower surgein Chicago leaves air controllers staring at blank screen: Rueters Yahoo

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Power surgein Chicago leaves air controllers staring at blank screen: Rueters Yahoo

ttp://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000103/ts/transport_chicago_1.html

just another of many power surges? Seems like there's a lot of them.

See story about 10 dead in India and also a mjor power outage there:Ten People Dead in New Delhi Fire caused by electirc power surge: experts puzzled: Times of india

http://www.timesofindia.com/today/03mdel1.htm http://www.timesofindia.com/today/03mdel4.htm

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), January 03, 2000

Answers

MCI, which operates the digitized link that failed between O'Hare and the Elgin facility, discovered the outage was caused by a power surge in a generator serving the facility as well as controllers at O'Hare itself.

An hour later, the FAA ordered a planned air traffic stoppage to switch the system to a different generator, which took nine minutes to complete, Molinaro said.

Why is O'Hare running on a generator?

-- I (dun@no.com), January 03, 2000.


Sorry, I forgot to include the link to the power crisis story:

http://www.timesofindia.com/today/04mpat11.htm

Power Crisis in India: India Times

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), January 03, 2000.


Good catch again Carl!

:-) Welcome to TB2K, where meaty factual verifiable posts about actual computer mishaps are greatly appreciated, and help to develop understanding about glitches.

[ Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only ]

Brief Outages Interrupt Chicago Air Traffic

Monday January 3 8:06 PM ET

Brief Outages Interrupt Chicago Air Traffic

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A power surge briefly knocked out radar screens at an air traffic control facility serving Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Monday, forcing two short postponements of takeoffs and landings.

The initial two-minute radar outage at the Elgin, Illinois, facility, which monitors flights within a 10- to 40-mile radius of O'Hare, left controllers staring at blank screens and without the ability to contact pilots by radio, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Tony Molinaro said.

Fortunately, the outage occurred during a slow mid-afternoon traffic period and delayed just five arriving flights and five others scheduled to take off, he said.

MCI, which operates the digitized link that failed between O'Hare and the Elgin facility, discovered the outage was caused by a power surge in a generator serving the facility as well as controllers at O'Hare itself.

An hour later, the FAA ordered a planned air traffic stoppage to switch the system to a different generator, which took nine minutes to complete, Molinaro said.
--------------------------------------------------

Hhhmmmm, this article does sound "different" than previous ones ...

Happy New Year !!!!!!!

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), January 03, 2000.


This is in another thread where I posted. But notice the end of the article. What on earth does a power surge at O'hare have to do with Boston???????

Is the FAA scrambling for excuses? And getting them mixed up? With the way their systems have been going down in the last year, many believed 2000 would be a problem. Well it seems to be. Here we are in the first high volume day of the year, and Boston and Chicago go down. And didn't another city go down today? Boy, alot dependent upon O'hare

Computer Malfunction Delays Flights

.c The Associated Press

NASHUA, N.H. (AP) - A computer malfunction at the Federal Aviation Administration's Boston Center here delayed flights at airports in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York Monday night.

The main computer at the air traffic control center went down around 7 p.m., said Jim Peters, spokesman for the FAA in New England. He said the problem was corrected by about 10 p.m. The center used a backup computer system during the outage.

``As a result of the outage we incurred extensive delays throughout the Northeast, both for flights arriving and departing,'' he said.

Peters said FAA officials would not know what caused the malfunction until Tuesday.

``Without knowing what has caused the problem, it would be premature to speculate,'' he said. ``It may turn out to be something other than Y2K.''

In Washington, Eliot Brenner, FAA assistant administrator for public affairs, said: ``The problems in Boston are not Y2K related and they are over now.''

The Boston Center controls flights over more than 160,000 square miles of air space from the Atlantic Ocean to western New York and from the Canadian border to south of Long Island in New York.

Departures and arrivals at Logan International Airport in Boston were delayed by at least 30 minutes because of the malfunction, according to airport officials.

Departing flights at both Kennedy International Airport in New York City and Newark International Airport in New Jersey were delayed by up to 75 minutes, said Sgt. Reinaldo Gonzalez of the Port Authority police. Shorter delays were experienced at La Guardia Airport in New York, Gonzalez said. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey runs all three airports.

In Chicago, radar displays used to direct traffic into O'Hare International Airport went down for about two minutes Monday afternoon, causing minor delays.

The FAA said air traffic controllers never lost audio contact with the five planes in the air and the five on the ground at O'Hare at the time.

MCI, which runs the system that failed, blames the outage on a power surge at an O'Hare generator. FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said the problem was not Y2K-related, and planes were never in jeopardy.

AP-NY-01-03-00 2332EST

Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without prior written authority of The Associated Press.

-- Duke1983 (Duke1983@aol.com), January 04, 2000.


Is this pure bullshit or can someone translate this into a credible explanation?

"MCI, which operates the digitized link that failed between O'Hare and the Elgin facility, discovered the outage was caused by a power surge in a generator serving the facility as well as controllers at O'Hare itself."

First it says that a digitized link failed, then it says it was caused by a power surge in a generator?

But what caused the power surge in the generator? Do generators at large power facilities normally "surge" for no reason, enough to break the link?

I'm sure Malcolm is going to come along and lecture me about how I should read Electricity 101 again, but I would prefer if he would just accept the fact that everybody is not an electrician and answer the damn question. On second thought, I know Carl will answer it without giving me any crap. Carl, if you will please?

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 04, 2000.



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