A severed backup fiber line in New Jersey knocked out Northeast air traffic control for hours, delaying or canceling thousands of flights and sparking a blame game.
It's crazy that there wasn't greater redundancy to prevent such a widespread fallout for so many hours. Hardly any planes flying around NYC yesterday. Glad they're recovering, but not great for all affected.
If we had a rule like EU261, even though statutory compensation would likely not be included here ('extraordinary circumstance'), at least the duty of care would apply (think, meals, hotels, more rebooking options). Instead, these folks get nothing. Kick rocks. Pound sand. Fly kite.
@samar Ben finally covered it!
It’s really embarrassing one would assumed for such a critical infrastructure they would have 4 to 5 different fiber runs coming into the facility from different directions.
The finger pointing is just a distraction. Construction crews accidentally damage utilities all the time (heck, my internet was out for 3 days for something identical to this!), thats why critical infrastructure is supposed to have redundancy. If the primary circuit had already failed and one severed backup cable can then bring air traffic across much of the northeast to a standstill for eight hours, I’d love to hear how that became a single point of failure rather than whose excavator found it.
Lack of redundant systems therefore a cutting of a line turns into a real cluster. Government at it's finest.
It's not just government. Redundancy designs frequently fall victim to those controlling budget and schedule, even in private industry.
Good thing we moved EWR ATC to Philadelphia for staffing reasons. But it's ok because instead of addressing the staffing problems the FAA announced their new "Smart" AI initiative yesterday as well. Sigh.
"Lack of redundant systems therefore a cutting of a line turns into a real cluster. Government at it's finest."
Exactly! As someone who has worked in telecommunications, I've seen some pretty heavy duty redundancy employed by firms who could not afford an outage. It even went so far as multiple access points into a building for just this very reason, utilities being cut during construction. There's so much this administration could do if the chief would pull his head out of his ass. I know it's not realistic. Putting your name on the Kennedy Center, building a big arch, renaming lakes, does nothing to improve the lives of American citizens. Fixing ATC would. So many lost opportunities. And no I do not have TDS. I voted for the guy.
David closes with: "And no I do not have TDS. I voted for the guy." *facepalm* Most Americans agree that we should invest in critical public infrastructure, like ATC (including redundancy, new equipment, properly staffing, etc.) However, you voted for the guy and the party that advocates for deregulation, budget slashing, and superficial vanity projects. Maybe next time vote for better candidates. 42 days until the Midterms.
If your party would have nominated a better candidate, maybe David and this David would have voted differently.
@A different David, nope, the Davids of the USA decided to vote for a convicted criminal, liable for sexual abuse, supporter of the January 2021 insurrection, with a terrible first term, among other niceties, as the moral leader of the country rather than vote for an Asian Black woman.
And these problems have been apparent and obvious for decades at this point. The small company I worked for switched to fiber nearly 30 years ago. The rot at the FAA is not new. I'm sure the DSA will save us.
Because it's an ATC issue it's one of the few things that's exempt from EC 261
Walter, even though compensation may not be eligible here, under EU261, airlines still owe a duty of care to affected passengers, even under so-called ‘extraordinary circumstances’ like this ATC meltdown. So, for inbound flights from EU (all carriers), or European carriers flying from these US airports back to EU, they still owe duty of care to affected passengers.
I flew south yesterday, not east. So I hope that the human garbage that populates the Northeast suffered nicely.
You flew south because you're a goose.
And apparently you don't know how to reply properly. This goose can cook, while you, a gelding named after a president with Alzheimer's, can't trot worth a damn.
United cancelling a bunch because of Newark makes sense, as does American being heavily affected because of Philly. However, I find it interesting that American had a lot more delayed flights rather than cancellations. I wonder if American was able to recover better than United? Or was it that United threw in the towel and told people they wouldn't be flying, so they could make other plans, while American in the best traditions of its rolling delays (which it's reportedly doing away with) just kept people hanging on all day? "United was hit hardest, with 361 cancelations (11% of flights) and 777 delays (24% of flights). American, meanwhile had 116 cancelations (3% of flights) and 1,301 delays (37% of flights). Delta had 47 cancelations (1% of flights) and 922 delays (25% of flights)."
Realizing some airports ground stopped while others merely slowed down, did any approach control facility revert to non-radar approaches? Dating myself a bit here, but I worked one of the last non-radar approaches controls (BFL), and we knew how to push tin. Even in bad weather, with timed approaches, we worked an ILS arrival every 2-3 minutes. Is there a single ATC out there today that even knows how to do that? Viva la PATCO!
I truly empathize with these passengers on Transatlantics. Many were diverted to BOS (not bad, you can take the train) but a few went to CLE and DTW amongst many other outlying stations with few options for stranded pax.
Some of these flights were diverted to my city... enough to make the local news.