ZME Radio/Radar Outage: Controllers Use Cell Phones

[pgengler]

Air traffic radar and radio outage hits flights

U.S. air traffic controllers used personal cell phones to sort out flights on Tuesday when a major communications systems failure in Memphis knocked out radio and radar, officials said.

The three-hour midday disruption in a telephone line prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to clear all commercial flights over an eight-state area in the Southeast and Midwest while the problem was fixed, the agency said.

The FAA said it did not know why the communications line failed, but there was no evidence of sabotage. Three long-range radar units were knocked out as well as radio communications.

Controllers used personal cell phones to call other air traffic control centers that still had radio contact with planes that they could not reach, a union official said.

[Nonstop2AUH]

I'm at a hotel in Chicago that displays a flight information screen in the lobby and just about everything that was scrolling by this evening said "delayed" - guess now I know why!