Passengers wait in line to reschedule flights at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Pictures: AFP Source: AFP US AIRPORTS are in chaos with nearly 2000 flights cancelled after a man began a fire in an Illinois air traffic control facility.
The man was yesterday charged in federal court in connection with the arson fire at an FAA radar centre.
Brian Howard, 36, remains hospitalised following the incident, in which he suffered injuries, and a court date has not been set. The fire was started in the basement of the Aurora facility, known as the Chicago Center forcing an evacuation and grounding all flights at O’Hare and Midway airports.
More than 2000 flights were cancelled around the country. Picture: AFP Source: AFP Some flights were resumed “at a reduced rate” around 10:30am. That did not prevent Southwest Airlines from cancelling all its flights at Midway Airport.
American Airlines said it had cancelled 786 flights at O’Hare and, like Southwest, said no decision had been made about Saturday.
As of 4pm, more than 1,900 flights had been cancelled at the airports and more than 900 were delayed. The Federal Aviation Administration did not say how much damage was caused by the fire or say when the centre would be back to normal operations.
The centre handles high-altitude traffic across parts of the Midwest. Controllers there direct planes through the airspace and either hand off the air traffic to other facilities handling high-altitude traffic or direct the planes to terminal radar facilities, which in turn direct planes to and from airport towers.
Anxious wait for thousands of passengers whose flights were cancelled after the fire at a traffic control facility. Picture: AFP Source: AFP Emergency crews responding to the fire in the basement of the centre found a 36-year-old man lying on the floor with burns and cuts on his hands and arms, authorities said.
“They attempted to get him out of the building, there was some degree of effort to drag him out,” said Aurora Fire Chief John Lehman.
The man apparently used gasoline to start the fire and had also tried to cut transmission lines, burning and cutting himself in the process, according to Tom Ahern, spokesman for the Chicago office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
He said early indications were that the man was “possibly a disgruntled employee.”
“Whatever his motivations were is yet to be determined,” Ahern said. “We just don’t know at this point why he may have done this”.
The man was taken to a hospital and was expected to survive. The centre was closed and 15 to 30 people were evacuated. One employee, a man about 50 years old, was treated at the scene for smoke inhalation.
Kanna Ortiz 4, waits in a line after her flight back home to New Jersey was delayed at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Picture: AP Source: AP “There was no explosion and, like any similar scene, first responders are being cautious as they clear the building and continue to make it safe,” Aurora police said in a statement at 11am. “This apparently is an isolated incident and there are no indications of terrorism at this time.” Police said the man is a contractor, not an air traffic controller or FAA manager.
“We understand that this is a local issue with a contract employee and nothing else,” Aurora Police Chief Gregory Thomas told reporters.
“There is no terrorist act.” Thomas said police were searching the man’s Naperville home.
A controller who was working in the facility said the radio frequencies went dead, apparently due to the fire, and that the air traffic control system was immediately shifted to back-up equipment. The controller said air traffic operations continued for a short time using the backup system until the evacuation order was issued.
“The (radio) frequency failed,” the controller said. “Depending on how bad the fire was, it could be a real mess getting things back to normal.”
As the groundstop is lifted, it will take a long time for the airlines to catch up. Passengers whose flights were cancelled will be put on wait lists for later flights, but with the mostly full planes that the airlines are operating it will be difficult to accommodate the overflow.
Long waits ahead as 2000 flights were cancelled after the fire. Picture: AFP Source: AFP Several hundred people waited hours in lines to check in or reschedule their flights at O’Hare International Airport while airline employees passed out water to accommodate travellers. Air National Guard members Jeff Boyden and Rob Combs, who were in Chicago for training, were to return to Omaha, Neb., on Friday morning but learned on their way from their hotel that they might have trouble getting there.
“I was in the lobby at about 6:30am when I first heard about the fire and some flights were cancelled,” Boyden said. “When we got there and checked in, our flight was still on time, then everything went red: cancelled, cancelled, cancelled.” The two were uncertain about their chances of making a flight Friday, so they decided to hitch a ride with friends who were driving back to Omaha from Chicago instead.
“We were on standby for one and that got cancelled and there was another at 7:45pm, but we said ‘No, let’s just get a ride home.’”
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