In a scary moment for travelers, a major airport lost all communications with flights coming and going for more than a minute. The terrifying incident happened on Monday.
Air traffic controllers at Denver International Airport were not able to communicate with flights for at least 90 seconds. As you can imagine, it was a chaotic scene. Now, the Federal Aviation Administration is investigating what caused the outage. It's only the latest issue at a major airport. Other airports have also experienced blackouts in recent weeks. Newark International Airport has particularly been affected.
"Part of the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) experienced a loss of communications for approximately 90 seconds around 1:50 p.m. local time on Monday, May 12, when both transmitters that cover a segment of airspace went down," the agency said. "Controllers used another frequency to relay instructions to pilots. Aircraft remained safely separated and there were no impacts to operations."
Major Airport Loses Communications
More than 20 pilots were unable to reach the major airport during the outage. Fortunately, an air traffic controller managed to reach a pilot using a distress line. They were able to communicate other pilots to swap to the line. .
"The biggest risk is you have airplanes that you're not talking to. And then, therefore, the pilots have to try to figure it out themselves," retired Denver air traffic controller David Riley said via Daily Mail. "It says that the equipment is getting old. It's one thing to lose track of one airplane because you can't communicate with them, but to lose track of all of the airplanes that you had communication with. And from my understanding, in this situation, they still had radar coverage, but that's like watching a car crash happen and not be able to do anything about it.'"
It's only the latest mishap at an airport. Moments like this can be terrifying, but also indicate a larger trend in the industry. Travelers want to know that they feel safe while flying. That starts with a consistent infrastructure at the airport and eliminating potentially deadly mishaps like these.
