FAA Probes Radar Station Outage

A major air traffic control station lost radar contact with up to 20 aircraft over Southern California on Thursday before controllers switched to a backup system five minutes later, federal aviation authorities said.

The cause of the failure remained unknown, but a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said that at no time were planes at risk of colliding because of the interruption.

“It’s serious when one of your radar systems goes out -- even if you have two,” said FAA spokesman Donn Walker. “We’re working very aggressively to find out why it went down and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

The failure at the FAA’s High Desert Terminal Radar Approach Control station occurred at 4:15 p.m.

Controllers immediately lost radar contact with 15 to 20 aircraft, while an additional 12 to 15 planes preparing to enter the station’s airspace were ordered into holding patterns as the backup system was activated. Also, several dozen aircraft at airports in Los Angeles, Burbank, Van Nuys and Las Vegas were delayed for up to 15 minutes.

The station, which is near Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, manages a swath of air space about the size of Oregon.

It tracks aircraft as they arrive and depart from most Southern California airports, including Los Angeles International Airport.

Another facility begins tracking the flights when they enter higher cruising altitudes.

Walker said the station has two radar tracking systems.

Air traffic controllers maintained radio contact with the airborne aircraft and asked pilots to keep them updated on their positions.

The first radar system remained out of commission early Thursday evening, although Walker said engineers were in the process of rebooting it.

In the event that the second radar system failed, he said, the FAA would be able to regain radar contact through other airports and facilities in less than an hour.