Miami Airport Radar Knocked Out for third time

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Miami Airport Radar Knocked Out

Sunday, December 17, 2000

MIAMI (AP) - A computer error knocked out radar at Miami International Airport for nearly an hour, forcing air traffic controllers to divert about 125 flights to an airport in Palm Beach County.

The radar was down from 6:37 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Saturday. It was the third serious radar problem at Miami International in the past week. ``There was a computer-processing problem,'' said Kathleen Bergen, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman in Atlanta. ``The computer wasn't tracking properly, the data wasn't correct.'' Flights scheduled to land at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International in Broward County, which relies on Miami radar, were also diverted to Palm Beach International Airport.

Saturday's radar trouble wasn't related to radar system failures Tuesday and Wednesday that contributed to two near midair collisions, Bergen said. On Tuesday, an American Airlines 757 and a United 767 came within little over a mile of each other, and on Wednesday, a United A320 Airbus and an American Eagle turboprop came within less than a mile of each other. Standard separation for aircraft on approach is three miles.

Bergen said the sweep on the controllers' screens had slowed down, causing them to momentarily lose some information. In both cases, on-board collision alert systems warned the pilots, who took emergency action.

http://news.lycos.com/headlines/TopNews/article.asp?docid=APV0524&date=20001217

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), December 17, 2000

Answers

Miami Herald

Published Monday, December 18, 2000, in the Miami Herald

Radar trouble caused a scramble

MIA controllers raced to other site

BY ELAINE DE VALLE edevalle@herald.com

A failed computer modem in the radar system at Miami International Airport sent air traffic controllers scrambling to their cars and to an alternate radar site some two miles west of the airport over the weekend.

``For about an hour and a half, we had a pretty chaotic situation,'' said Andrew Cantwell, president of the Miami tower local of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

In an interview Sunday, Cantwell added dramatic detail to the account of the equipment failure Saturday night that forced aviation officials to delay and divert flights from MIA and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

It was the second significant radar-related failure at MIA this past week. On Wednesday, the sweep on radar scopes slowed and lost information on aircraft on approach and -- at one point -- two aircraft came within less than one mile of each other just west of MIA.

The failures, some air traffic controllers said, are reminiscent of repeated radar breakdowns in 1995, which federal aviation engineers thought had been fixed.

Federal Aviation Administration officials, however, said there was no evidence to link the current problems with the pattern of failures five years ago.

In fact, FAA officials said the radar itself did not fail Saturday and played down the significance of the new failures.

In recent years, FAA equipment has failed with increasing frequency at several airports throughout the country for various reasons, including age and complexity.

Controllers were alarmed by Saturday's breakdown.

``We had approximately 75 airborne aircraft in holding for a maximum of 20 minutes,'' Cantwell said. ``And departing aircraft, over 50, were held on the ground for up to an hour.''

The Miami system, which covers both MIA and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, failed, Cantwell said.

The system at Fort Lauderdale, which serves as a backup to Miami, also failed, he added.

``It was a complete failure of all of our radar,'' Cantwell said.

But Kathleen Bergen, an FAA spokeswoman, said radar was not the issue in Saturday's breakdown.

``It was a problem with a modem in the computer system,'' she said.

Airport officials said at least three flights were rerouted to Palm Beach International Airport.

MIA traffic controllers monitor round screens where sweeps show planes -- called ``targets'' -- and data blocks that give altitude, flight number and other information.

Every 10 seconds, the radar picks up all aircraft within its range and the signal goes through a phone line and into the computer, Bergen said. The computer processes the data and shows the planes and the data blocks on the screen.

Saturday's glitch caused the ``targets'' to ``drop off'' the screen or ``coast,'' Bergen said. ``They were dropping off and coming back or they weren't moving along the screen accurately.''

Though there is a second radar antenna in Fort Lauderdale as a backup when MIA's antenna fails, there is no modem in Fort Lauderdale, Bergen said.

``All the radar data is processed in Miami,'' she said.

Cantwell said controllers may be losing patience with the system. ``As far as we know, it was a skip failure which has something to do with the modems,'' Cantwell said. ``Unfortunately, what that does to us is make the radar go out of service. If it is one piece of equipment that failed and caused all that, then the system has to be changed because that is not acceptable.''

According to Cantwell, screens went completely blank; then they would come back on or lose part of the information, such as aircraft altitude and flight speed, for minutes at a time.

``Sadly, there were no radar technicians on duty at the facility that could diagnose and fix the problem in a timely manner,'' Cantwell said. ``It's become more and more of a problem not having the appropriate coverage available by the folks who maintain the equipment.

``At one point, an air traffic controller was in the equipment room on his cellphone talking to a technician, trying to have him walk through restarting one piece of equipment, something air traffic controllers are not trained for and shouldn't be doing.''

It didn't work.

``Controllers in Miami had to get in their cars and drive over to the Miami Center to do the radar function from there.''

Unlike approach control at MIA -- which has only short-range radar of up to about 55 miles and controls landings and takeoffs -- controllers at the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center, along the Palmetto Expressway at Northwest 58th Street, have radar that tracks aircraft for at least 200 miles; they take over traffic control once planes reach cruising altitude.

``It was a very unusual outage,'' Cantwell said. ``We've never seen anything like it before. Certain parts of the screen would go blank. Parts of the data would disappear, and then when the sweep got to another sector, it would show up again.''

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), December 20, 2000.


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