Airport tower blacked out twice by power failures
All power systems failed twice Sunday morning in the air traffic facility that guides traffic into and out of Stevens Anchorage International Airport via radar, the FAA confirmed Monday.
The failures included two backup systems.
"This could have happened the week before when we were in the fog. It would have been an absolute nightmare," said Larry Lescanec, Alaska vice president of the air traffic controllers union. As it was, air traffic was light.
But FAA regional administrator Bob Lewis said the situation was handled safely Sunday and it would have been safely handled even if more aircraft had been flying. Management of air traffic would have been handed off from the airport radar facility to the air route traffic control center on Boniface Parkway near Elmendorf Air Force Base, Lewis said.
The Boniface center normally directs planes on the long distances between airports. Transferring control to Boniface would just cause delays, not unsafe conditions, Lewis said.
The Anchorage Terminal Radar Approach Control, which experienced the outages, is on the ground floor of the tower at the airport. It controls aircraft between the ground and 20,000 feet within about a 30-mile radius, said Lescanec. In the top of the same building, a group of controllers manage traffic on the runways and taxiways.
The blackouts came at about 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., Lescanec said. In the first instance, an Alaska Airlines jet to Seattle was outbound and control was transferred to the Boniface center, he said. In the second, a small cargo plane was landing and the pilot guided the plane in visually, he said.
Alaska Airlines said one flight was delayed one hour and 39 minutes due to the problem.
Lescanec said the complete blackouts at the radar facility were unprecedented. He said software that displays radar information went out for several minutes too.
"What happened is they declared a condition called ATC zero. It means the facility is not able to provide any air traffic control services," he said. That lasted 10 to 20 minutes, he said.
He blamed the FAA for not maintaining batteries in the emergency backup power system that is supposed to come on right away.
The batteries are intended to maintain power until a generator kicks in.
Lewis said the batteries failed in the first blackout Sunday and the generator failed a couple of hours later. He said he didn't know why the generator failed.
The FAA had batteries on order for some time but had some trouble with the manufacturer or supplier, Lewis said.
Now the agency has scrambled to get batteries and expects to have them in town Tuesday and installed Wednesday, Lewis said. "There's certainly no neglect," he said.
Source: Airport tower blacked out twice by power failures
The failures included two backup systems.
"This could have happened the week before when we were in the fog. It would have been an absolute nightmare," said Larry Lescanec, Alaska vice president of the air traffic controllers union. As it was, air traffic was light.
But FAA regional administrator Bob Lewis said the situation was handled safely Sunday and it would have been safely handled even if more aircraft had been flying. Management of air traffic would have been handed off from the airport radar facility to the air route traffic control center on Boniface Parkway near Elmendorf Air Force Base, Lewis said.
The Boniface center normally directs planes on the long distances between airports. Transferring control to Boniface would just cause delays, not unsafe conditions, Lewis said.
The Anchorage Terminal Radar Approach Control, which experienced the outages, is on the ground floor of the tower at the airport. It controls aircraft between the ground and 20,000 feet within about a 30-mile radius, said Lescanec. In the top of the same building, a group of controllers manage traffic on the runways and taxiways.
The blackouts came at about 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., Lescanec said. In the first instance, an Alaska Airlines jet to Seattle was outbound and control was transferred to the Boniface center, he said. In the second, a small cargo plane was landing and the pilot guided the plane in visually, he said.
Alaska Airlines said one flight was delayed one hour and 39 minutes due to the problem.
Lescanec said the complete blackouts at the radar facility were unprecedented. He said software that displays radar information went out for several minutes too.
"What happened is they declared a condition called ATC zero. It means the facility is not able to provide any air traffic control services," he said. That lasted 10 to 20 minutes, he said.
He blamed the FAA for not maintaining batteries in the emergency backup power system that is supposed to come on right away.
The batteries are intended to maintain power until a generator kicks in.
Lewis said the batteries failed in the first blackout Sunday and the generator failed a couple of hours later. He said he didn't know why the generator failed.
The FAA had batteries on order for some time but had some trouble with the manufacturer or supplier, Lewis said.
Now the agency has scrambled to get batteries and expects to have them in town Tuesday and installed Wednesday, Lewis said. "There's certainly no neglect," he said.
Source: Airport tower blacked out twice by power failures
