NY lost radar - March 7 2006 4:40 P.M.

[dave]

Relayed from another mailing list...

so I'm sittin here listening to the Boston Tower feed, when suddenly      
some a/c gotta hold because NY CENTER JUST LOST ALL RADAR!!! i dunno if    
this is really much of a "boston" event, but found it sorta                
interesting, especially since they cant accept handoffs, nothing!          
Theeyre trying, from what i can hear, to give completely different        
routes that are below 10,000. APP still has radar, but the center is      
blind. I just found it sorta interesting, and since everyone has to be    
below 10,000 feet before entering their airspace (i think they only got    
radar up to 10,000 or something), the skies are gonna be packed.          
                                                                           
           Boston Center Feed:                                            
http://audio.liveatc.net:8012/zbw_test.m3u                                
           NY Approach Feed:                                              
http://audio.liveatc.net:8012/jfk_app_dep.m3u

[dave]

Update:

DELAY INFO                                                      
                                                               
ARPT AD DD TIME REASON                                          
EWR    +90 2133 ZNY RADAR FAILURE                              
JFK    +30 2113 ZNY RADAR FAILURE                              
LGA    +90 2101 ZNY RADAR FAILURE                              
TEB    +75 2055 ZNY RADAR FAILURE                              
                                                               
GROUND STOPS                                                    
                                                               
ARPT UPDATE POE SCOPE REASON ADVZY                              
EWR 2200 MED NOWEST +CZY_AP EQUIPMENT/ZNY COMPUTER FAILURE 046  
LGA 2159 MED NOWEST+CZY_AP EQUIPMENT/COMPUTER FAILURE

[Jason]

...that's right, no radar, no handoffs, etc, etc...

N90 still has radar (feeds off HPN, JFK, and EWR), but the center radar is OTS.

You can also try my ZBW feed which should have stuff as well, since they mainly handoff to the ZNY ETX 46 sector:
http://audio.liveatc.net:8012/kbdr.m3u

I hope ZNY gets some engineers to fix the scopes soon! ...busy airspace out there! Luckily ZNY is one of the "smaller" centers, although it does indeed have a large amount of traffic flow . It doesn't make a difference for the oceanic controller though! They must be sitting and laughing about the regular area controllers not having radar. <g>

Jason

[PHL Approach]

I'm listening right now, sounds fine. Im sure the secondary kicked in soon after. JFK is doing fine, however TEB, EWR and LGA are not. But when are they not!

I decided to kick the feed back on for old times sake.
http://audio.liveatc.net:8012/zny_epa.m3u

[tyketto]

This, to be honest, is quite common.

Recall last summer or the summer before (2004 - 2005) when all those wildfires were loose in the LA Basin. The FIM VOR burned to the ground (FIM is on the routes for almost every STAR from the northwest to every major airport in the basin (save ONT and PSP). There were two fires in particular that came close to both SCT and ZLA Center, to where ZLA had to be evacuated.

What happened in this case was that with LA Center shutting down, there were LOAs in place between ZLA, ZOA, and ZAB to where they would extend their airspace to control some of those areas that they could reach. SCT would run normally, but would hand off to ZOA/ZAB, pending which facility controlled that space. I'm sure something like this exists between ZNY, ZDC, and ZBW. ZNY is small, but very compact. I bet a call to one of their facilities would get you those LOAs in case of emergency.

BL.

[znymz]

Ok, here's the scoop. The FAA has been training and trying to implement a new system called URET which is a computer based system to replace the paper strips we have been using since the dawn of aviation. Well, URET had a flight plan for a Piedmont flight that didn't include a departure or destination airport. It didn't know what to do when the plane landed so it locked up and took the main computer down with it.

The backup sysytem, DARC, was not online so it took about 20 minutes before we had accurate displays and radar feeds. Then about 1/2 hour later we went back to the main system.. it hiccupped a few times over the next half hour. We went offline with Washington Center and had to manually coordinate flights coming to and fro for a while. Then everything settled down.

Bottom line is, the radar sites were working but the main, what we call the HOST computer, in New York Center crashed. A bit of a scramble during the worst of it but at least no planes conflicted with each other and everyone eventually got to their destination safely.

[Jason]

Ok, here's the scoop. The FAA has been training and trying to implement a new system called URET which is a computer based system to replace the paper strips we have been using since the dawn of aviation. Well, URET had a flight plan for a Piedmont flight that didn't include a departure or destination airport. It didn't know what to do when the plane landed so it locked up and took the main computer down with it.

The backup sysytem, DARC, was not online so it took about 20 minutes before we had accurate displays and radar feeds. Then about 1/2 hour later we went back to the main system.. it hiccupped a few times over the next half hour. We went offline with Washington Center and had to manually coordinate flights coming to and fro for a while. Then everything settled down.

Bottom line is, the radar sites were working but the main, what we call the HOST computer, in New York Center crashed. A bit of a scramble during the worst of it but at least no planes conflicted with each other and everyone eventually got to their destination safely.

Thanks for the full scoop  

Much appreciated,
Jason

[PHL Approach]

I forgot to post the info my friend Marcy gave me. Hes a Dev. working on his D sides in Area A. He gave me about all the same info, just not as indepth. Appreciate it, MZ.