On Friday, March 13, the FAA imposed a ground stop across five airports serving the Washington D.C. area that lasted about two and a half hours. Operations were halted at Washington National, Dulles, Baltimore, Andrews, and Richmond. It was triggered when air traffic controllers evacuated the Potomac TRACON facility.
- A strong chemical smell forced the evacuation
- It was reportedly due to overheating circuit board
Transportation research Bob Poole explains what happened. The smoking board was part of a 25-year-old voice switch that hadn’t been properly maintained.
Poole explains that about 30 years ago the FAA went from maintaining all of its equipment to a “replace when it breaks” approach in order to cut costs, and slashed its number of maintenance staff by more than one-third (from about 6,600 technicians to about 4,000). Aging systems frequently now go without routine upkeep. Many technicians are no longer being fully trained on all critical systems, either. That suggests we could see similar issues elsewhere across the air traffic control system.
Credit: FAA
Credit: FAA
According to Poole’s sources, senior leaders in the Air Traffic Organization have not elevated the risks of this maintenance policy to the FAA administrator or to the transportation secretary. And while the federal government is in the midst of an effort to replace legacy equipment, the issue of maintenance remains a critical problem.
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