Contractor Cuts Communications for New York Air Traffic Control
New York air travelers experienced delays in early November due to contractor carelessness and inability, says the Professional Airways Systems Specialists (PASS), AFL-CIO, the union representing Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) systems specialists.
On November 2, 2006, contractors working for Harris Corp., the company now providing Federal Communications Infrastructure (FTI) circuitry and communications for the FAA, were performing corrective maintenance on equipment at New York’s Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC). Other systems also were impacted by the maintenance work, resulting in a loss of circuits that provide remote and interfacility communications and leading to significant unscheduled outages lasting nearly an hour.
PASS claims that the FAA is placing the flying public at “extreme risk” by employing contractors without the level of expertise of trained FAA systems specialists who understand how the systems work together at a facility in order to keep air traffic moving safely.
As a result of the work being performed by the contractor, the ARTCC lost all communications with Boston, Washington, and Cleveland centers as well as those to the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility. Additionally, circuits that provide connectivity to the remote center air-to-ground radios and the backup emergency communications services were interrupted.
All departures were stopped from New York TRACON’s airspace, which serves several major airports including Kennedy International and Newark International. A hold on airborne flights also was implemented for aircraft traveling from Cleveland ARTCC to New York ARTCC. Approximately one hour after the outage, Harris contractors returned to the original configuration that they were trying to correct and communications services were restored.
The contractors did not complete the work. PASS says that rescheduling the work with the same contractors could cause similar events to recur, perhaps with more serious consequences.
Since Harris Corp. was awarded the FTI contract in 2002, the transition to the system has been plagued with contractor errors, outages, missed deadlines, and escalating costs. A recent Department of Transportation (DOT) Office of Inspector General (IG) report emphasized that the FAA must gain better control of its contractors. PASS has called attention on several occasions to problems associated with the work of Harris contractors, with the most recent incident involving loss of radars in Dallas/Fort Worth.
PASS represents more than 11,000 employees of the FAA and the Department of Defense (DOD) who install, maintain, support, and certify air traffic control and national defense equipment, inspect and oversee the commercial and general aviation industries, develop flight procedures, and perform quality analyses of the aviation systems.
