Chicago: O'Hare Controllers See Increase in False Radar Images--FAA accused of playing down problem

The Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) - False radar images have been popping up on the screens of O'Hare International Airport's air traffic controllers, forcing pilots to take sudden turns unnecessarily, the Chicago Sun-Times reported in its Sunday editions.

At least a dozen "ghost planes" have been reported during the last few weeks, the newspaper said, citing documents from the Terminal Radar Approach Control center in Elgin, Ill., and interviews with controllers. Controllers said that at least a few times, they have ordered pilots to take sudden turns to avoid what appeared to be planes on their radar, potentially putting passengers at risk.

"The ghosting is a complete terror for the air traffic controllers," said Charles Bunting, president of the Elgin local of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

False radar images can appear when a crane or construction tower is put up, said Federal Aviation

Administration spokesman Tony Molinaro. Planes from nearby airports also have appeared much closer to O'Hare than they actually were in recent weeks, controllers said.

Molinaro said there have been 13 ghost images in the last five weeks, rather than the eight or nine the FAA would usually expect in that time period, "meaning we still need to look into them."

But Mike Egan, vice president of the controllers union at Elgin, accused the FAA of playing down the problem. "Maybe 130, but not 13," Egan said Friday. "We had a couple of them today, as a matter of fact. ... They know there's a problem."

O'Hare controllers have also recently complained about the FAA's plans to speed air traffic at O'Hare by stacking arriving planes vertically around O'Hare's air space rather than having them line up single-file.

Bunting said the radar situation raises questions about the safety of the procedure.

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGI648DNH8C.html

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), May 20, 2000

Answers

This is very strange, usually the gain is turned completely down on the FAA's radar scopes so the only thing that shows is the symbology of the flights. Turning down the gain is especially important with a cluttered radar picture that occurs at busy International airports. Are they getting false raw radar returns (which should not show with the gain turned down) or false Aircraft flight vector symbology?

-- Phillip Maley (maley@cnw.com), May 21, 2000.

Ghost planes plague O'Hare

May 21, 2000

BY ROBERT C. HERGUTH TRANSPORTATION REPORTER

Air traffic controllers who handle flights around O'Hare Airport are seeing a frightening increase in "ghosts," bogus radar images of airplanes that don't really exist or are actually hundreds of miles away.

Over the last few weeks, at least a dozen such images have mysteriously appeared on radar scopes at the Terminal Radar Approach Control facility in Elgin, according to interviews with air traffic controllers and documents obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

At least a few times, controllers said, they have ordered pilots to take sudden evasive actions: "immediate right turn," "immediate left turn," "descend immediately." Such maneuvers, which can put passengers at risk, were later found to be unnecessary.

No near collisions have occurred, but documents give details of the confusion caused by ghost radar images.

On April 19, an air traffic controller spotted a "target" 18 to 20 miles northeast of O'Hare, when the aircraft in reality was departing DuPage County Airport.

Earlier this month, an airplane appeared on the scope north of O'Hare, at 4,000 feet, when actually it was on final approach to Midway Airport, the documents show.

"The ghosting is a complete terror for the air traffic controllers," said Charles Bunting, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association local at Elgin.

The control center in west suburban Elgin handles traffic within a 40- mile radius of O'Hare, the world's second-busiest airport. The area's other main air-traffic centers are in Aurora and at O'Hare.

Another problem has cropped up on the same Airport Surveillance Radar- 9 scopes, which have been used since 1992. Controllers have seen malfunctions of radar software that displays aircraft altitude, flight numbers and airspeed.

The problems apparently are unrelated but together are increasing opposition by air traffic controllers to the planned resumption of a test procedure that can squeeze more arrivals into O'Hare airspace.

The procedure, known as CAPS, or Compressed Arrival Procedures, vertically stacks airplanes around O'Hare. Already tested on some O'Hare flight corridors, the CAPS procedures would allow stacking of planes only 1,000 feet apart.

"The airlines and the FAA want to do this . . . to reduce delays within the system and get the aircraft here quicker," said Bunting, of the controllers union.

"Our problem is--and we want to do everything we can to enhance the efficient flow of air traffic into the facility--in light of this radar situation that's developing here, we don't feel it's a viable time to conduct these tests when safety can be compromised because of it."

CAPS testing might resume next month, Tony Molinaro, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said Friday. But a final decision on whether to implement the stacking on an arrival corridor northeast of O'Hare hasn't been made. Currently, arrivals are typically single file.

Molinaro said the testing wasn't designed to coincide with an expected jump in flight operations caused by the phaseout of O'Hare flight limits.

And Molinaro said that neither the stacking procedures nor the radar "glitches" should worry airline travelers.

"Over the past five weeks there have been 13 unsubstantiated reports, meaning we still need to look into them and see if they're substantiated ghosting events," Molinaro said. "Over that time period you'd expect eight or nine reports from controllers, so it's a little more than normal.

"At the surface they look random, and that's why managers feel they're not a significant problem, but we'll still look at every single one. If someone puts up a construction tower or crane temporarily, those type of things can cause" a ghost image.

But Mike Egan, vice president of the controllers union at Elgin, said Friday the FAA is downplaying what has been an increasingly common occurrence.

"That's a bald-faced lie," he said about the FAA's figure of 13 ghost incidents. "Maybe 130, but not 13. We had a couple of them today, as a matter of fact. I had one this afternoon. . . . They know there's a problem."

Bunting added: "When they first installed [the radar equipment], we had problems. For whatever reason, something has happened. Not only is it back, it is worse than before."

An American Airlines pilot with more than 20 years of experience who frequently flies to O'Hare said he never has had to take evasive action for a "false target." However, he has been asked by controllers to search for an aircraft while he was airborne, only to find out it was a ghost.

He said he's not worried by the increased number of false images, citing his confidence in the onboard Traffic Collision Avoidance System, which alerts pilots of dangerously close aircraft.

But he wishes "the federal government would dig into the trust fund and update the air traffic control system." With new hardware, such glitches could probably be minimized, he said.

Paul Hudson, executive director of the watchdog group Aviation Consumer Action Project, agreed. Noting that some equipment is so old "they don't make it anymore," he said the age alone sometimes contributes to safety problems.

Controllers said another safety problem stems from the radar software, which displays airspeed, flight number and altitude on the ASR-9 scope. The Automated Radar Terminal System has been getting knocked out when the number of flight plans filed by flight crews tops 250. That happens on busy days, when radar might be needed the most.

The FAA said it is working on the problem. "What we found out a few months ago is, if too much flight plan data was stored, the computer program would kick out some data," Molinaro said. "But we found that out immediately, and we do have a contingency for that now. Our technical folks, whenever it's a busy day, they monitor the data storage and every 15 minutes . . . they take out any secondary data so the primary important data would not be touched."

He said an FAA technical center is "working on a patch to fix the glitch, and we expect to get that installed" in August at Elgin. "It truly hasn't caused any delays or posed any safety problems."

But he conceded that some of the software problems, which have taken different forms since new software arrived two years ago, persist at the Elgin center, which last year handled 1.36 million operations.

That's a lot of airline passengers, said David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association in Washington.

"The air traffic control system only runs efficiently when the controllers have confidence in their equipment," Stempler said. "This is not good." The FAA "should get it fixed immediately before we do have a safety problem."

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/ghost21a.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 22, 2000.

Feds blame `ghosts' on hangars

June 10, 2000

BY ROBERT C. HERGUTH TRANSPORTATION REPORTER

Two airplane hangars at O'Hare Airport are largely to blame for the "ghost" planes that have baffled air traffic controllers, federal officials said Friday.

Ghosts appeared with increasing frequency this spring. The bogus images on radar screens were seen by controllers at an Elgin air traffic control facility that handles flights around O'Hare and Midway airports. In at least a few instances, controllers ordered real planes to take quick, evasive action to avoid what turned out to be ghosts.

A computer analysis found that the ghosts were caused by radar bouncing off of the hangars, which are used by American and United airlines on the northwest side of the airfield.

Airline and FAA officials are scratching their heads, unsure why the buildings, which have been there for years, caused a spate of false images.

But they have tweaked software to ignore the false radar bounces. The number of ghosts has dropped significantly.

"We've pretty much eliminated it for now," said Gary Duffy, the Federal Aviation Administration's airway facilities maintenance chief for the Chicago area. "We've gone this whole week without one controller report of a ghost."

The sheds and everything around the airfield are constantly pelted by radio waves from radar systems trying to get a fix on aircraft.

The FAA found that radar beacons, after bouncing from the hangars, have been hitting O'Hare-bound aircraft. Transponders on the planes figure they're dealing with a beacon directly from O'Hare's main radar antenna--instead of a mere reflection--and send back the exact aircraft location. The problem, however, is that information then travels the same route by which it came: It bounces off one of the sheds to the radar site.

The result is two images of the same aircraft on a radar scope. One image is accurate; the other could be way off mark, but could appear to be a totally different plane, FAA officials said.

Duffy said ghosting sometimes increases when a construction crane pops up in an area, or a building gets a new roof or some metallic component.

But officials at American and United said there have been no recent improvements to either structure. United's building, which is 195,000 square feet, has a rubber coating on the roof, said United spokesman Joe Hopkins. American's 166,000-square-foot hangar has metallic paint on the walls, but has been there for years, officials said.

After pinpointing the problem area, FAA technicians set software to ignore reflections coming off the hangars, FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said.

Over one 24-hour period last month, 0.14 percent of all flights handled by the Elgin facility were considered ghosts. That number has dropped to 0.02 percent, Duffy said, adding that some ghosting is inevitable with radar.

Mike Egan, vice president of National Air Traffic Controllers Association local in Elgin, said he hopes the fix holds. He said there were several ghosting incidents last weekend--after the software changes

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/hare10.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), June 10, 2000.