Comms Failure at Airport Highlights FAA Negligence

This press release represents an interesting view from the people who work with the involved systems every day. PASS represents more than 11,000 employees of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Defense who install, maintain, support and certify air traffic control and national defense equipment, inspect and oversee the commercial and general aviation industries, develop flight procedures and perform quality analyses of the aviation systems.

Harris FTI Deficiencies Continue
to Risk Safety Around the Country

MEMPHIS, TN — Yesterday’s communications outage at Memphis International Airport was completely preventable, says the Professional Airways Systems Specialists (PASS), the union that represents Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) technicians. At fault is the FAA’s failure to address serious deficiencies in Harris Corporation’s Federal Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI), which provides circuitry and communications for the FAA.

The outage was caused by the loss of a circuit card at subcontractor Bell South’s central office, which prevented telecommunication lines from feeding information to air traffic and ultimately resulted in a complete shutdown of radar, radio and telephone contact at the Memphis Air Route Traffic Control Center.

Previously, when communications lines failed, a backup telecommunications system automatically came online to support these vital systems until the primary communications lines could be restored, thus preventing a full-scale failure. However, the FAA lowered the standards and definition for diversity in order to award this contract to Harris. As an effort to make the FTI contract more profitable, Harris Corporation merged the backup path for these systems together. (more…)

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The IRA link repeater system has a new repeater on-line in Mackinaw City, Michigan operating on 146.84 MHz with a 103.5 CTCSS on receive and transmit. WB8DEL, W8HVG, W8BCI and KC8GXO installed it on September 1. It is located about seven miles south of Mackinaw City.

Initial tests indicate that it will extend the IRA link system coverage to Sault Ste. Marie and most of the eastern half of the Upper Peninsula. It will provide handie-talkie coverage in the area around the Mackinac Bridge and Mackinac Island. (more…)

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