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On Friday, September 26, 2014, a telecommunications contractor named Brian Howard woke early and headed to Chicago Center, an air traffic control hub in Aurora, Illinois, where he had worked for eight years. He had decided to get stoned and kill himself, and as his final gesture he planned to take a chunk of the US air traffic control system with him.
Court records say Howard entered Chicago Center at 5:06 am and went to the basement, where he set a fire in the electronics bay, sliced cables beneath the floor, and cut his own throat. Paramedics saved Howard's life, but Chicago Center, which controls air traffic above 10,000 feet for 91,000 square miles of the Midwest, went dark. Airlines canceled 6,600 flights; air traffic was interrupted for 17 days. Howard had wanted to cause trouble, but he hadn't anticipated a disruption of this magnitude. He had posted a message to Facebook saying that the sabotage “should not take a large toll on the air space as all comms should be switched to the alt location.” It's not clear what alt location Howard was talking about, because there wasn't one. Howard had worked at the center for nearly a decade, and even he didn't know that.
(Score: 1) by dentonj on Friday February 27 2015, @12:08PM
General aviation still uses a lot of old technology. Magnetos are still used in general aviation engines. It's what, a hundred year old design? So why doesn't everyone switch over to new electronic ignition systems? Because FAA supplemental type certificates, or being able to modify an airplane, are not cheap. You normally only see electronic ignition systems in new airplanes where the ignition system, engine, and aircraft received a type certificate at the same time. I can only imagine the process to make changes to equipment / computers used by ATC is just as equally hard and expensive.