Oakland Center Controllers Resort To Cell Phones

[AirtrafficController]

Landline and radio communications at Oakland Center both failed for several minutes Wednesday morning, leaving controllers to orchestrate via cellphone with surrounding facilities to separate aircraft over the large area for which the center is responsible. Now, controllers are asking why. The outage, which lasted for at least 15 minutes between what the FAA said was 8:12 and 8:27 a.m., drove more than half the controllers at the facility to mobile phones as their communication relay in what is actually part of the FAA's contingency plans for such an outage.

http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/oa ... 074-1.html (http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/oakland_center_outage_cell_phone_subcontractor_nat ca_faa_201074-1.html)

[Matt Molnar]

Sounds fishy that both radio and phones would die simultaneously.

[mmedford]

uh huh... sounds like an FTI issue...

[PhilDernerJr]

Care to share with the rest of the uncool world what FTI is?

[cancidas]

uh huh... sounds like an FTI issue...
funky trainee issue

[mmedford]

FTI/Harris is the telco provider for the FAA...that contracts with local providers (eg; Verizon, AT&T) to bring communications between sites possible.

http://www.harris.com/view_pressrelease ... pr_id=1910 (http://www.harris.com/view_pressrelease.asp?act=lookup&pr_id=1910)

[Matt Molnar]

Sounds like FTI runs the wired stuff...would that cause the radios to die?

[mmedford]

Sounds like FTI runs the wired stuff...would that cause the radios to die?

In several cases; the transmitters & recievers are not colocated with the center/tracon. They are at an offsite. FTI operates the lines that would carry the data to/from the offsite.

[Matt Molnar]

I see, thanks.