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Newshound (Newshound)
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - 8:24 am: | |
Sept. 15-Outage grounds area flights,LB Press Telegram
Radio glitch forces delay, diversion of planes to region Tuesday.
By Press-Telegram wire reports
Radio failure at a Federal Aviation Administration control facility forced some airports in the Western United States, including Long Beach, to hold flights on the ground for more than three hours Tuesday, authorities said.
The outage occurred at 4:40 p.m. at the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale, which controls airspace in the Los Angeles region, Northern California and parts of Nevada, said FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown.
The cause of the radio failure was not immediately announced.
Brown said planes were grounded at airports in the Los Angeles region, including those in Orange and San Diego counties, as well as in Las Vegas. That was expected to have a ripple effect across the nation.
Control of the airspace was turned over to other air traffic control facilities, including one in Albuquerque, N.M.
At Long Beach Airport, three airplanes remained grounded at around 8 p.m. two JetBlue Airways jets and one Alaska Airways plane while travelers waited.
JetBlue, Alaska and American airlines processed passengers in the hopes the grounding would be lifted, and informational display screens at the airport still showed flights running on time.
But worried passengers and relatives using cell phones to try to get updates told another story.
"I'm trying to figure out where to stay,' one traveler said as he scurried to a hotel shuttle bus.
"I'm waiting. There's literally absolutely nothing to do here,' said another.
Incoming flights from New York, Washington, D.C., Boston and other points in the East were diverted and grounded in Denver, Phoenix, Dallas, Seattle and Salt Lake City.
As soon as the stop order was lifted, about 8:15 p.m., airlines began loading planes for departures, said spokeswoman Sharon Diggs- Jackson.
According to listed schedules, there are 22 departures and arrivals operated by JetBlue, American, Alaska and America West from 6 until 9:51 p.m.
Flights arriving late because of the stoppage will be diverted onto the airport's shorter runways, or can opt to divert to another airport, Diggs-Jackson said.
At the time of the outage, air traffic controllers could monitor the planes on radar but were not able to communicate with them, Brown said.
Pilots were forced to switch to a different radio frequency to communicate with other control facilities, she said.
"We want to stress there are no safety issues just delays because control over the air space has been turned over to other air traffic facilities,' said Gaby Pacheco, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles International Airport.
All flights at San Francisco International Airport destined for Southern California were grounded, said airport spokesman Mike McCarron.
The airport's duty manager, Dennis Neves, said the airport had taken three diversion flights Tuesday evening that were headed for Southern California.
One was a Virgin Airlines flight from London. Another was a Seattle flight that was scheduled to land in Orange County, but was sitting on the runway at SFO instead. A Northwest cargo flight from Anchorage, Alaska, also was instructed to land at SFO.
The Associated Press and staff writer Felix Sanchez contributed to this report.
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