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Nearly 2,000 Chicago Flights Canceled After Worker Sets Fire At Radar Center

Posted by Soulskill on from the enjoy-your-prison-stay dept.

SpzToid sends this news out of Illinois: Nearly 2,000 flights in Chicago have been canceled so far today as federal aviation officials slowly resume operations at O'Hare and Midway airports following a fire that was deliberately set at an FAA radar center, apparently by a disgruntled worker. The center handles high-altitude traffic across parts of the Midwest. Controllers there direct planes through the airspace and either hand off the air traffic to other facilities handling high-altitude traffic or direct the planes to terminal radar facilities, including one in Elgin, which in turn direct planes to and from airport towers.

4 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Really, a single oint of failure? by s.petry · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I would think that the major hubs in the US didn't operate with this poor of a practice. Honestly, I'm flabbergasted. This is not something you can hide when it's exposed. What I find more surprising is that with this big of a deficiency, they didn't go with the "terrorist" card in order to deflect some of the backlash this should cause.

    I wonder how many other airports are using a system with similar vulnerability.

    I don't see this as just a problem with some guy who obviously did something wrong. Seems like lighting or other natural events could have the same impact.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

  2. Re:Striking air traffic controllers fired by mi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Remember when Ronald Reagan fired all of the air traffic controllers because they had the nerve to form a union and strike for better pay?

    You mean, when they conspired to cripple the nation's air-transportation — holding the rest of us hostage? Imagine, Verizon turning off all telephones to demand lower taxes — a public employee has an even stronger monopoly power...

    Now the air traffic controllers work on obsolete equipment, get paid very little, have a stressful job with long hours

    That must all be Reagan's fault, right, 30 years later...

    I am almost amazed no one has gone crazy before now.

    Maybe, it just is not quite as bad as you are describing?

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  3. Backups? by Dereck1701 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Aren't these kinds of critical systems supposed to have backups? I see DHS/TSA is too busy strip searching children/grandmas, securing chicken farms & writing up justifications for their abuse of authority to bother with the "unimportant" things like securing/fortifying the transportation infrastructure.

  4. Re:Let's see whether they actually prosecute, firs by pupsocket · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Will the person who modded my comment down please read it?

    He did not set the whole facility on fire. He tore up the floorboards and set fire to whatever was underneath his basement workplace.

    He was cutting his own throat with a knife when emergency crew got there.

    He wrote that for the first time in a long time he gave a shit.

    This is not the profile of a disgruntled worker. It sounds more like a story about a repentant member of some secret police -- domestic surveillance squad.

    The reassignment to Hawaii sounds like a promotion, as it was for Snowden.

    We'll know more if the government actually brings this guy to trial. That's why I think they won't.