Originally Posted by Khantahr

It was never going to be a black swan no matter how long it went. There was nothing impacting demand. If anything it would have helped our profit because we could have jacked up prices on the fewer flights we were allowed to do.

Originally Posted by MeteorA113

When was ATC ever at normal capacity? They've been chasing that tail since Reagan.

Originally Posted by NYT

Something's Got to Give

By Darcy Frey

March 24, 1996

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/24/m...t-to-give.html


All the way down the bank of radar scopes, the air traffic controllers have that savage, bug-eyed look, like men on the verge of drowning, as they watch the computer blips proliferate and speak in frantic bursts of techno-chatter to the pilots: "Continental 1528, turn right heading 280 immediately! Traffic at your 12 o'clock!" A tightly wound Tom Zaccheo, one of the control-room veterans, sinks his teeth into his cuticles and turns, glowering, to the controller by his side: "Hey, watch your *******ed planes -- you're in my airspace!" Two scopes away, the normally unflappable Jim Hunter, his right leg pumping like a pneumatic drill, sucks down coffee and squints as blips representing 747's with 200 passengers on board simply vanish from his radar screen. "If the F.A.A. doesn't fix this *******ed equipment," he fumes, retrieving the blips with his key pad, "it's only a matter of time before there's a catastrophe." And Joe Jorge, a new trainee, scrambling to keep his jets safely separated in the crowded sky, is actually panting down at the end as he orders pilots to turn, climb, descend, speed up, slow down and look out the cockpit window, captain!

From the passenger seat of a moving airplane, the sky over New York City seems empty, serene, a limitless ocean of blue. But on a controller's radar scope, it looks more like a six-lane highway at rush hour with everyone pushing 80. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving -- usually the busiest air-travel day of the year -- jets are barrelling toward Newark just 1,000 feet above the propeller planes landing at Teterboro. Newark departures streak up the west side of the Hudson River just as La Guardia arrivals race down the east. And in the darkened operations room of the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control -- the vast air traffic facility in Westbury, L.I., that handles the airspace over New York City -- the controllers curse and twitch like a gathering of Tourette sufferers, as they try to keep themselves from going down the pipes.

That's what they call it -- "going down the pipes" -- and though it has never led to a midair collision, just the threat of it leaves a controller damp and trembling in his chair. As rush hour arrives, his radar scope fills with blips -- eight jets for Newark, say, five props for Teterboro, six La Guardia departures climbing over northern New Jersey and a traffic-watch helicopter over the George Washington Bridge. But that's O.K., the controller assures himself, he has what they call "the picture" -- a mental strategy to avoid conflicts -- and despite the quickening traffic, he's commanding the pilots with rhythmic ease: "Newark jets maintain 2,500 feet. . . . Teterboro props descend to 1,500. . . . La Guardia planes climb to 6,000. . . . "

Then, for an instant, his mind wanders -- don't forget to pick up milk on the way home -- and suddenly he looks back at the scope and it's gone: no picture, no pattern, just a mad spray of blips (and more blips now than there were five seconds ago) heading -- where? North or south? Climbing or descending? He can't remember, and though he tries to catch up, he's already behind, conflicts arising faster than he can react -- one here, one there -- jets streaking across the sky at 300 miles an hour, the controller's stomach in knots because he knows he's going down, nothing to do but leap from his chair, rip off his headset and yell to his supervisor, "Get me out of here -- I'm losing it!"

Sometimes it is the Federal Aviation Administration's ancient equipment that messes with a controller's head -- a radar scope from the 1960's going dark with a dozen planes in the sky, or a dilapidated radio blowing out. A few years ago, a controller guiding 10 jets in a great curving arc toward Newark suddenly lost his frequency just as he had to turn the pilots onto the final approach to the runway. Watching in helpless horror as his planes careered farther and farther off course, the controller rose from his chair with an animal scream, burst into a sweat and began tearing off his shirt. By the time radio contact was re-established -- and the errant planes were reined in -- the controller was quivering on the floor half naked, and was discharged on a medical leave until he could regain his wits.

Every day that the controllers come to work, they ask themselves if this will be the shift of their unmaking, and on the Sunday after Thanksgiving they are performing the full gamut of rituals to ward off doom. One controller stands and paces in tight circles while issuing commands; one drops to his knee, his nose touching the glass; one taps the scope with a finger; one holds himself together by singing out loud. Because the traffic is so heavy tonight, they all take chow at their scopes -- the 12 controllers who handle the airspace over Newark Airport shoveling takeout Chinese into their mouths while issuing their commands. "US Air 512, descend and maintain 4,000" -- Hey, who's got the plum sauce? -- "start down now, no delay!"

Just as the holiday traffic reaches its peak, Tom Zaccheo looks down the bank of radar scopes to see who's closest to flaming out and spots Joe Jorge, the breathless trainee, falling dangerously behind in his commands. "Hey rookie, what's wrong down at the end there, rookie!" Zaccheo jeers mercilessly. Jorge looks over and, emulating the veterans, gives a gruff, fearless chuckle. But he turns right back to his scope -- "Jetlink 3723 turn left heading 080 -- traffic off your 2 o'clock!" He doesn't have a second to spare.

ALMOST 15 YEARS HAVE PASSED since the infamous Patco strike, which ended with President Reagan firing 11,400 of the nation's 17,000 controllers, but the F.A.A.'s system for moving airplanes safely across the skies has never been closer to chaos. Many of the nation's airport control towers and radar rooms still have fewer fully trained controllers than before the strike, yet the number of flights they must guide through the teeming skies has soared in some facilities by 200 percent. Meanwhile the computer and radar equipment they must do it with has grown scandalously old and degraded. Last year, air traffic control centers -- some with 30-year-old, vacuum-tubed computers -- suffered more blank radar scopes, dead radios and failed power systems than in any previous year, according to Representative John J. Duncan Jr. of Tennessee, chairman of the House aviation subcommittee.

F.A.A. officials say they are turning things around -- hiring more controllers and replacing old equipment. In 1994, the agency embarked on a modernization program that they say will deliver 1,000 new screens and work stations to the busiest controllers beginning in 1998. Meanwhile, because of built-in redundancies, the current system is "99.4 percent reliable," says Anthony Willett, an F.A.A. spokesman. "It's a '65 Mustang that we're hellbent on keeping in great shape, polishing the hell out of the fenders." Adds Monte R. Belger, associate administrator for air traffic services, "the Mustang is going down the road at 55 miles an hour, so any improvements have to be done while it's up and running."
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Equipment failures have not yet led to any crashes, but in the airspace over New York City, the number of operational errors -- also known as near midair collisions -- jumped threefold in 1994. And as the F.A.A. lags further behind schedule and over cost in modernizing the equipment ($500 million and 15 years wasted on software that was never used), it falls to the controllers, handling half a billion passengers per year and working mind-numbing overtime, to keep the system from completely falling apart. "I won't tell you what the 'F' in F.A.A. stands for," snarls one controller. "But the 'A.A.' is for again and again."

Mention air traffic control and most people think of those glass-enclosed airport towers, but the real frenzy takes place in the F.A.A.'s 175 Terminal Radar Approach Controls, or Tracons, some of them miles from the nearest runway. Once a plane takes off, an airport controller "hands it off" by computer to a controller at a Tracon, who uses radar and radio to guide the plane through the swarming metropolitan airspace. Once the plane has climbed to 17,000 feet, the Tracon controller hands it off again to a controller at 1 of 21 Air Route Traffic Control Centers, which guide flights across the high-altitude expanses between airports. All F.A.A. facilities are challenging places to work, but the New York Tracon -- which handles up to 7,000 flights a day into and out of Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark, as well as 47 smaller airports, all within a 150-mile radius -- is considered the most hair-raising control room in the world.

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/24/m...t-to-give.html