Sep 25, 2007 3:15 pm US/Central
Equipment Failure Disrupts Flights Across Country
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) ―
The Federal Aviation Administration cleared all airline traffic within 250 miles of Memphis on Tuesday, grounding an unknown number of flights around the country, because communications equipment had failed at the regional air-traffic control center there.
Air-traffic control centers in adjacent regions handled flights that were already in the air when the problem was discovered, FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said. "The airspace was completely cleared by 1:30 (p.m.) Eastern time," she said.
High-altitude flights through the region -- which includes Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, parts of Indiana and Kentucky and West Tennessee -- were discontinued while the equipment was being fixed.
"What we did is put a ground stop in place for any flight that would transition through that airspace. We held them on the ground wherever they were, whether it was Miami, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston," Bergen said.
The FAA's action was having a ripple effect in several airports.
David Magana, a spokesman at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, said 26 flights were being held Tuesday afternoon for departure and 49 have been canceled. DFW officials are making plans in case the problem strands travelers.
"At this point our operations team and the airlines operations teams are obviously looking at the situation, and we're preparing for the eventuality that we might have to have guests," Magana said.
In Nashville, 12 Northwest Airlines flights were diverted, and 25 to 30 departures had been delayed one to two hours, airport spokeswoman Emily Richard said. Disruptions affecting fewer flights were reported at airports in St. Louis, Miami, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Ky., and Kansas City, Mo.
Memphis, with the headquarters of shipping giant FedEx Corp., is the world's busiest airport for cargo, handling 4.08 million tons of air freight in 2006. The Memphis airport also is a hub for Northwest Airlines.
No major problems were reported at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport or Chicago's O'Hare and Midway airports, aviation officials said.
Bergen said the FAA did not know how long it would take to fix quipment at the Air Route Traffic Control Center at Memphis or have an immediate number on how many flights were affected.
"There was failure in communications equipment and there also was a failure of radar data from three out of nine radar sites," Bergen said. "The radar sites were working, but the data was not
being fed into the center."
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