Capacity is steadily increasing at airports affected by the sabotage of critical communications equipment at Chicago Center on Friday. As of late Sunday (PDF), the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said 72 flights per hour were getting into O'Hare International Airport and departure delays of 15 minutes in the afternoon were expected to increase to about 30 minutes later in the day. NATCA President Paul Rinaldi said controllers were literally making up contingency plans as they went along coping with what the union says is an unprecedented operational challenge. "This is one of the most challenging situations that air traffic controllers and other FAA employees have faced since 9/11," Rinaldi said. "The damage to this critical facility is unlike anything we have seen before. We are working diligently to re-establish as close to normal operations as possible to minimize the inconvenience to travelers while keeping safety above everything else." The FAA also issued a release saying repair, restoration and sanitization of the building and equipment damaged by the arson attack and suicide attempt began early Saturday. The FAA said late Sunday that it will take about two weeks to fix the damage.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/news/faa-controllers-coping-with-chicago-outage