http://www.dailysouthtown.com/southtown/dsnews/042nd2.htm

Power surge delays flights at O'Hare

Radar glitch not related to Y2K bug

Tuesday, January 4, 2000

CHICAGO (AP)  Radar displays used to direct traffic into O'Hare International Airport went down for about two minutes Monday afternoon, causing minor delays.

The Federal Aviation Administration 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, blamed the outage on a power surge at an O'Hare generator. FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said the problem was not Y2K-related, and said no planes were placed in jeopardy.

On the East Coast, a computer malfunction at an air traffic control center in New Hampshire delayed flights Monday night.

The malfunction occurred at the FAA's Boston Center in Nashua, N.H., around 7 p.m. local time, WFXT-TV in Boston reported.

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

Officials at Logan said the problem was fixed by 10 p.m. EST, and that everything was expected to be back to normal by Tuesday morning.

The extent and cause of the problem were not known and the FAA did not return messages seeking comment.

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.

Departing flights at 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, also in New York City, Gonzalez said. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey runs all three airports.

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), January 04, 2000

Answers

Why was a generator running at O'Hare ?

-- Dana (A_Non_O_Moose@xxx.com), January 04, 2000.

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

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.

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), January 04, 2000.

snip....said the problem was not Y2K-related. end snip I Bet we'll here this phase more than once............

-- kevin (innxxs@yahoo.com), January 04, 2000.

...not related to Y2K bug...

Up until last Friday, every story about computer malfunctions had to carry the obligatory paragraph describing what Y2k was. Now, every news story about computers will have to carry the above obligatory sub-headline. Giant Tarantula Eats New York (not related to Y2K bug)... Woman Gives Birth to Octuplets (not related to Y2K bug)... Earth Explodes (not related to Y2K bug)...

-- Citizen Kane (where@is.Rosebud?), January 04, 2000.

I posted on this forum months ago that my DH delivered a large shipment of batteries for generators to the FAA control tower at O'Hare.

He recently delivered another shipment of batteries and asked why the heck they needed all of these batteries if Com Ed was in such good shape. The response was ROTFLaughter.

I don't know why they are running on generators either. I live in a NW Suburb of Chicago. I have not experienced power outages or fluctuations (since the rollover). My uneducated guess would be an across the board contingency plan mandated by the FAA PTB for a period of time following the rollover 'just in case'.

-- Deborah (infowars@yahoo.com), January 04, 2000.

Deborah-

I think you'd be surprised at how many businesses have uninterruptable power supplies to keep stuff going, these things require DEEP-CYCLE batteries, ALOT of them (not like the kind that your DH supplied for the generators).

The generators are used to recharge the DeepCycle batteries if the power is off for a period of time longer than the UPS can provide.

The generators also supply power to all systems while the batteries in the UPS are being charged.

Also- batteries that are not used much (such as the ones used to start generators) can deteriorate much faster than the ones in your car.

hence the need to replace them more often.

Back up power is normal in critical situations such as Air Traffic control.

so is maintenance of these backup systems.

-- plonk! (realaddress@hotmail.com), January 04, 2000.

also- regarding the reliability of ComEd:

anyone who has suffered a loss of service that has cost them untold amounts of money can tell you that they have ONE plan to describe how they deal with ComEd.

"Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst"

-- plonk! (realaddress@hotmail.com), January 04, 2000.