By Josh Funk
A fiber optic wire was broken Friday, briefly causing air traffic controllers in Florida to lose radar. However, the outage did not cause any inconveniences, unlike those that occurred following similar outages near the Newark, New Jersey, airport last spring.
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As planned, a backup system kicked in, allowing controllers to continue flying flights throughout five Southeast states. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, there were no flight disruptions.
The radar center in Jacksonville, Florida, remained operational, according to the FAA, but was placed on alert status due to a failure in its principal communication connection. On Friday afternoon, a contractor was attempting to fix the broken fiber line. The cause and location of the severed fiber line were not disclosed by the authorities.
The length of time the radar was offline was not specified by the FAA, but when air traffic controllers in another Philadelphia facility lost radar twice this spring, it took 90 seconds for their systems to restart. Five controllers at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey took trauma leave following those outages, which caused significant disruptions at the Philadelphia facility that controls aircraft entering and exiting the airport.
Because the remaining controllers were unable to safely handle every flight on the schedule, hundreds of flights had to be canceled in Newark. Since then, that airport’s operations have greatly improved.
According to an FAA representative, the backup system took over, preventing Jacksonville from losing vital air traffic service. Aircraft operating over approximately 160,000 square miles of airspace throughout the majority of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina are controlled by that center.
A large portion of the country’s air traffic control system still uses outdated copper lines, which were blamed for the issues in Newark. According to transportation experts, the issues in Newark showed that the system needed a multi-million dollar revamp, which they are urging Congress to authorize.
