Over 1,000 flights canceled in Chicago after electrical issue, smoke at air traffic facility

About 1,120 flights were canceled Tuesday at Chicago's two major airports after an electrical problem sent smoke into a regional radar facility's control room, forcing officials to temporarily halt all air traffic at one of the nation's busiest aviation hubs. The Federal Aviation Administration said all personnel were evacuated from the radar facility in suburban Elgin at about 11:30 a.m. They were allowed to return about three hours later. The Chicago Department of Aviation said a limited number of landings and departures had resumed by late afternoon.

Elgin Fire Capt. Anthony Bialek said a bathroom exhaust fan in a ceiling overheated and melted insulation on some wires, and smoke was pushed through the facility's ventilation system and into the control room. Bialek said it took about an hour to find the source of the smoke at Chicago Terminal Radar Approach Control, or TRACON. There were no injuries. Controllers at the TRACON facility are responsible for managing the region's air traffic as it leaves and approaches all of the area's airports. Once an aircraft is within about 5 miles of an airport, TRACON workers hand over control to that airport's tower.

Inbound flights already in the area at the start of the shutdown were handled by a backup air traffic facility in the city of Aurora, just west of Chicago. Some flights were diverted to other airports. Aerial TV footage Tuesday afternoon showed a large backup of aircraft along taxiways at O'Hare International Airport. Inside the terminals, people trying to rebook on later flights formed long lines. David Winter of Sarasota, Florida, said he and his wife, Denise, would stay overnight in Chicago after their flight was canceled.

"My wife hates to fly ... so she literally asked me if we could rent a car and drive," Winter said, adding that they ruled it out and were rebooked on a Wednesday flight.

Instead, the retired couple stopped off at an airport cocktail lounge.

"So, obviously, we're not in dire straits," he said.

As of about 3:30 p.m., arrivals at O'Hare were about 75 percent of normal — 72 an hour compared with the normal of about 106 per hour, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union that represents controllers. Departures were operating normally, he said. O'Hare is the second-busiest airport in the country by numbers of passengers and is a major hub. Around half of passengers there are connecting to other flights. Any disruption to its operations has an enormous ripple effect on the nation's aviation system.

The Chicago Aviation Department said departures were delayed about 90 minutes late Tuesday at O'Hare and 2½ hours at Midway International Airport. A computer glitch at a similar facility last month forced a 45-minute shutdown at Los Angeles International Airport.

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Fury as air traffic controller in 2009 crash back on the job

An air-traffic controller who was joking on his cellphone about grilling a cat when he could have been preventing a deadly, midair collision off Manhattan is back on the job — and now he’s routing planes around coastal Virginia, an area teeming with military jets.

Carlyle Turner, 42, is in a control tower again despite a federal investigation that faulted him in a 2009 accident in which a private single-engine plane crashed into a helicopter full of tourists over the Hudson River. All nine people aboard both aircraft were killed. After a paid suspension, Turner was transferred to the Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport, WPIX-11 reported. The victims’ families were seething.

“It’s awful. It’s reprehensible,” said Pamela Altman, 65, of Upper Dublin, Pa., whose husband, Steven, was piloting the plane.

“He should have been fired, he should have been prosecuted and he should have gone to jail.”

The New Zealand family of the helicopter’s pilot, Jeremy Clarke, were “outraged,” said their lawyer, Justin Green. An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found Turner was on the phone with a co-worker on Aug. 8, 2009, when he was supposed to be monitoring traffic from the tower at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport. During the call, he joked about barbecuing a dead cat that had been found at the airport

“Fire up the cat,” he said, according to the NTSB probe.

Adding a racial slur, he said, “Chinese people do it, so why can’t we?” transcripts revealed.

While gabbing, Turner missed hearing Steven Altman read back the wrong frequency for contacting Newark Airport, where a controller wanted to warn the pilot about the helicopter in his path. Turner and his union successfully appealed a recommendation that he be fired, Green said. Steven Altman’s brother and nephew died with him. Sister-in-law Jaclyn Altman won an $18.7 million negligence settlement from the federal government, the National Law Journal reported.

The feds also paid $14.5 million to relatives of the Italian tourists in the helicopter, while Clarke’s parents and sister got $1.5 million. Pamela Altman said she settled with the feds and the Liberty Helicopter tour company. She wouldn’t reveal the amounts. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said he was shocked to learn Turner was working again, because “even if this gentleman was totally rehabilitated, it sends such a bad signal to others that he’s back on the job in such an important air safety position.”

The Newport News airport is about 10 miles from Joint Base Langley-Eustis, called “the home of East Coast tactical air power.”

A Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman said only, “Controllers have the same due-process rights as other federal employees and are also covered by the provisions of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association contract.”

Turner, who lives in Chesapeake, Va., wasn’t home Sunday. Neighbors said he and his wife moved in about three years ago. WPIX reported last week that Turner is one of 12 controllers nationwide who have been reinstated despite being faulted in deadly crashes since 1998.

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Dubai Overtakes Heathrow as Busiest Airport for International Passengers

Dubai International became the busiest airport globally for international passengers in the first quarter, overtaking London's Heathrow, and illustrating the stellar growth of Emirates Airline in less than 30 years of operations.

Dubai's main hub, the home of Emirates, handled 18.36 million international passengers in the first quarter of the year, Dubai Airports said in a statement Monday. Heathrow saw a total 16.1 million people pass through the airport in the same period, according to statements on the airport's website.

Heathrow pipped Dubai last year to the top spot for international traffic, followed by Hong Kong and Paris, according to official figures from Airports Council International, a global trade body, which hasn't released first quarter figures yet.

Statements from all four airports show Dubai to be the busiest airport for international passengers and the fastest-growing in the first quarter, as the number of people passing through the hub increased 11.4%, compared with the same period a year earlier.

"The growth in passenger and freight traffic supports our continued investment in expanding and improving our facilities at Dubai International," said Paul Griffiths, chief executive officer of Dubai Airports.

Dubai International's growth is being driven by Emirates and its strategy of using widebody aircraft to connect passengers in Asia and Australasia with Europe and the U.S. via a stop in its home hub. The airline carried nearly 40 million passengers in its last fiscal year. It and lower-cost, shorter-haul carrier flydubai, which is also based at Dubai International and growing apace, helped add 28 new destinations to the airport last year.

Having started operations in 1985, Emirates now serves 142 destinations in 80 countries and territories making it one of the largest carriers in the world, and it plans to grow further. The airline has 374 jets on order with Boeing Co. and Airbus Group worth a combined $162 billion. That is on top of the 218 it currently flies, although many of those aircraft will replace some of the current fleet.

Flydubai is also soaring. It increased passengers last year by 38% to 6.8 million. To cater for forecast growth of both Emirates and flydubai, Dubai Airports has plans to increase capacity at Dubai International from 75 million currently to 100 million by 2020.

The airport may still be edged out by Heathrow for the full year, as Dubai International plans an 80-day improvement project on its two runways on May 1 that will reduce the number of flights at the airport by 24%, and impact Emirates full-year revenues by $272 million.

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