Blames Lack Of FAA Action For Equipment Shortage

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association reports for the second time in six months, a primary radar failure Sunday morning at Cincinnati Tower (CVG) and Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON), combined with what the union calls a lack of appropriate secondary radar feeds, delayed scores of flights into and out of the nation's 14th-busiest airport at the beginning of a morning rush hour period.

NATCA reports the outage began at 0736 EDT Sunday -- and by the time it ended at 1030, 29 departing flights were delayed between 28 and 39 minutes each. Controllers instituted a first-tier ground stop, meaning Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC, or "center") and Indianapolis Center put flights to CVG into holding patterns.

The union tells ANN there are only two long-range radar feeds into CVG, meaning that when controllers have to rely on secondary radar, they cannot "see" planes on their radar scopes that are below 5,000 feet. In those situations, such as on Sunday, Cincinnati air traffic controllers were forced to use non-radar procedures, which are based on time and distance measurements and result in 10-mile gaps between departing flights.

The normal arrival rate into CVG is 108 aircraft per hour. During Sunday’s outage, that was cut to 32. NATCA says the failure -- and the resulting domino-effect -- can be blamed on what it calls the "lack of Federal Aviation Administration action to give local CVG management the radar feeds necessary to keep the airport running efficiently in the event of power interruptions."

"We need other radar feeds," said Jason Hubbard, the CVG facility representative for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. "The FAA has the ability to bring others in, but it appears to be a cost problem."

The union says local FAA management officials have tried to rectify the problem... but says local calls to senior FAA officials to fix the problem have been ignored.

Hubbard said the FAA termed a similar radar outage in January "unprecedented..." and the likelihood of one happening again was "rare."

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.natca.org