FAA PROBES FAILURE OF CONTROL CENTER'S BACKUP GENERATOR.Byline: CHARLES F. BOSTWICK Staff Writer PALMDALE -- Federal Aviation Administration Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), component of the U.S. Department of Transportation that sets standards for the air-worthiness of all civilian aircraft, inspects and licenses them, and regulates civilian and military air traffic through its air traffic control officials are investigating why a backup power An additional power source that can be used in the event of power failure. See UPS and backup.  A Half Minute of Backup This roomful of lead acid batteries stands ready to drain itself entirely in less than a minute. system failed at the air-traffic control air-traffic control air n → Flugsicherung f center that directs jetliners flying in and out of Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, after a vehicle crash knocked down a high-power line in Palmdale. Disrupting hundreds of flights and delaying thousands of travelers across North America North America, third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. , the outage that shut down radar and communications systems at the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center The principal facility exercising en route control of aircraft operating under instrument flight rules within its area of jurisdiction. Approximately 26 such centers cover the United States and its possessions. Each has a communication capability to adjacent centers. in Palmdale occurred while the center was operating on backup generators that started automatically after a vehicle knocked down a utility pole four miles away. ``We believe it was the switching system. We're not sure. It's under investigation,'' Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Mike Fergus said. In the three hours it took Tuesday night to get the control center functioning normally again, nearly 350 flights nationwide were delayed, 49 were canceled, and 102 were diverted, many to Las Vegas, Fergus said. Controllers were told that the center's backup generators functioned but that some problem occurred with the electrical system that connects the generators to the center, said Bruce Bates Bates , Katherine Lee 1859-1929. American educator and writer best known for her poem "America the Beautiful," written in 1893 and revised in 1904 and 1911. , a controllers union leader at the Palmdale center. ``We were on backup power at the time of the outage,'' he said. Electricity had been knocked out briefly to a wide area of Palmdale about 4:15 p.m. Tuesday, when a speeding pickup truck ran a red light at Avenue O-8 and 10th Street West and hit a utility pole, severing it at its base, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies said. Power came back on after about 30 seconds, though electricity remained off in the community of Green Valley 15 miles away for about 40 minutes, Southern California Edison Southern California Edison (or SCE Corp), the largest subsidiary of Edison International (NYSE: EIX), is the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California. It provides 11 million people with electricity. spokesman Alis Clausen said. For about 25 minutes starting around 6:15 p.m., Edison workers turned off a distribution line, serving more than 1,000 homes and businesses, to make repairs. The line doesn't serve the FAA center, Clausen said. The FAA said its backup power system came on after the initial brief outage and failed at 5:35 p.m., knocking out radar and communication systems. Other traffic control centers, including ones in Oakland, San Diego County, Salt Lake City and Albuquerque, took over the job of directing airliners. Planes about to depart for Los Angeles were held on the ground, Fergus said. The backup power resumed at the Palmdale center about 7:30 p.m., and it took an additional hour to get the center functioning normally, Fergus said. |
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