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Nearly 2,000 Chicago Flights Canceled After Worker Sets Fire At Radar Center
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.
This is a high-visibility example, but employers should really learn it can be much cheaper to gently gruntle your workers than to deal with the consequences.
Apparently you did nod read the lead. He fired them.
wake up and hold your nose
Your solution is "don't travel so much?" With all due respect, go fuck yourself. We already pay fees on airline tickets to pay for things like this. If the system cannot handle the current load, then the system needs to be upgraded.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
So there's no provision for having the work done at this center be taken up at other centers? The news reports say radar center, but can't the data be routed elsewhere? What it there were a much larger fire that took down the facility for months? Does that mean Chicago becomes a no-fly zone?
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.
Police said the man is a contractor, not an air traffic controller or FAA manager.
Reading is hard.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I... I... I said if they... if they move my desk one more time I'll set the building on fire!
You want them to land planes from home? LOL That has to be the silliest thing I have heard all week.
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? Now the air traffic controllers work on obsolete equipment, get paid very little, have a stressful job with long hours, oh and are the only people stopping planes from running into eachother. I am almost amazed no one has gone crazy before now.
cheap contract workers are better than investing in employees!
If a single person can cause so much havoc without killing anyone — and without the condemnation and sympathy for the victim concomitant with any would-be murder — the terrorists don't need to kill.
Heck, they don't even need to set fire — just phone-in an anonymous warning.
A moderately motivated group could also disable a city's subway system for hours — by boarding the trains on carefully picked stations and pretending to have a seizure of some sort. Our kind society's rules (as evidenced in that paragon of humanity New York City) say, you can not be taken out of the train — except by "qualified personnel". So all other passengers will be removed from the car and the train will wait for the EMS to arrive and figure out, what to do with you. If your friends do the same to every other subway lines at the same time — during rush hour — your organization is bound to get donations, all without you killing or maiming a single person...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That's actually a really good point. If you want to get access to sensitive locations, get hired onto the work crew. Want a key to the CEO's office? Become a janitor.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
Which is exactly why lots of people wonder about the intelligence of hiring on the lowest bidder to clean out and stock commercial aircraft. You know, those people who scrunch down everywhere in the cabin with no supervision. Who load baggage in the hold after the TSA 'screens' it. Who deliver boxes and boxes of stuff to all manner of aircraft.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
The people you're talking about go through a ton of screening before being allowed onto an aircraft.
As someone who works at an airport, no, they don't.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil