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waiting three days for some flights; others
reported being on the tarmac for over 20
hours. Media photos of passengers sleep-ing
on the ground and clusters of luggage
waiting for their owners clearly illustrated
the chaos something unexpected can bring
to our industry.
We all remember the devastating fire
in 2014 that took out FAA’s Chicago
Center, causing two weeks of flight dis-ruptions
and forcing the FAA to reeval-uate
their contingency plans. In January
2017, the DOT Inspector General (IG)
released a report and testified before
Congress that the FAA must improve its
contingency plans. While the IG acknowl-edged
that some NextGen investments
will bring more expanded capabilities
and improved continuity of service, many
of these features will not be available
for years.
The catastrophes I mentioned each
stemmed from different types of unexpect-ed
problems – weather, sabotage, computer
outages, and unknown reasons – which
all created significant flight delays and
unexpected cost. Their paths for returning
aviation operations to regular status may
initially seem unique, but much of the
planning, steps to recovery, training, and an
overall preparedness philosophy is consis-tent,
regardless of the emergency.
The FAA’s Air Traffic Organization
(ATO) policy for contingency plans requires
ATC facilities to develop Operational
Contingency Plans (OCPs), which “pro-vide
guidance during contingency opera-tions
and establish continuity until normal
services can be fully restored.” Each facility
management team is responsible for having
OCPs in place. The plans should achieve
90 percent of the airport acceptance rate at
core airports within 24 hours of an event
and to return affected airspace to 90 percent
of capacity within 96 hours. These specif-ic
orders covering OCPs were updated in
May 2017 (for more information, visit www.
faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/
JO_1900.47_E_chg1.pdf).
My concern is that for any contigency
plans to be effective, in addition to a
comprehensive design, significant
training is required to ensure it’s executed
successfully. Air traffic facilities – especially
already understaffed facilities like New
York and L.A. – will face additional
challenges finding time for contingency
training when short staffed.
I don’t think unexpected events will
decline in 2018. In fact, the list of potential
problems is growing with just one source of
unexpected events – cybersecurity. At the
beginning of each year, some cybersecurity
experts like to predict the next year’s
top cyber concerns. For 2018, that list
includes more events like the problematic
WannaCry ransomware attack of May
2017 as well as more State-sponsored
attacks. There are also predictions that
simple and easy to hack password-only
authentication is trending to extinction.
Additional authentication requirements
will become more common and easier to
implement. Given that cybersecurity threats
remain a concern for all aspects of the
aviation industry, ATCA presents Aviation
Cybersecurity in Washington, D.C.,on
July 18, 2018, will dive deep on trends and
best practices.
Responding to unexpected crises will
continue to be part of living in the world
of aviation. We are featuring an article this
month on the outages at ATL, from an air
traffic controller’s perspective. We wanted
to dive into more details about what hap-pened,
how they responded, and what were
the lessons learned.
On a more positive note, here at
ATCA we are deep into preparing for
World ATM Congress 2018, March 6-8
in Madrid, Spain. We are excited about the
growing numbers of attendees, sponsors,
exhibitors, and, of course, interest in this
year’s event. We hope you will join us and
continue our conversations about ways to
provide the safest, most reliable, and most
efficient air traffic systems possible.
ATCA Bulletin | Issue No. 1, 2018
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