ATC Zero is probably the most 'nightmaring' situation for an Air Traffic Controller.... BIG LIKE FOR THESE GUYS!!! Previous video (Captain incapacitated in mid-air) --> ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0k4QOl-TDIA.html
I'm a controller in the U.S. (FAA) and it's not really a "nightmare" -- we use what's called "positive separation" which means aircraft are never on collision courses with each other, and especially in the terminal environment like here, arrival, departures and overflights are already procedurally separated (by route, altitude, or speed control). Since new arrivals and departures are stopped, it's more of an annoyance to get everyone onto the right frequency (departures to the overlying center, arrivals already on approach to the tower, and overflights into hold).
We don't have handheld radios in the FAA. Our radio system is based on dedicated phone lines to the transmitters which are spread out. They're powered separately.
i think not, in french(wish i am) help me is said(a l'aide) or (aider moi), the way mayday sound would be near from (moi aider) wish translate to, me helping but not while refering to yourself , but more like me helping you,also, moi aider isn't a correct way of saying it it would be (moi, j'aide) or (moi, je t'aide)
The backup generator could have broke a relay or low battery or whatever. Its likely stationed at a remote radar site instead of outside the offices so someone has to physically drive up to the radar to manually power on the generators. Sometimes it takes multiple starts with a complex system like this is likely very old like the rest of the ATC system. Airports with backup generators for ILS go down sometimes in test due to small unresolved issues. My local airport couldnt give ILS approaches for a day in bad weather because the backup system had failed and the tech had to be called in to replace a battery. Caused diversions due to bad weather
@@Weuniok As someone who installs and maintains backup power systems I have to chime in here. First, no system is 100% fail safe. even with redundancies, the failure rate is never 0. Second, with facilities of these size, yes they do have backup up generator systems but keep this in mind: When power is lost, the generator has to wait, usually about 1 minutes before it fires up. It does this incase regular grid power comes back on in under that minute. After that minute the generator initiates it startup sequence which can take another minute or two. Once its warmed up, the system needs to engage the transfer switch which directs all or necessary circuits from regular grid power to backup generator power. Think of it like a giant light switch. The transfer switch computers needs to make sure the power coming from the generator is accurate in voltage and matches the equipment that will be drawing from it. If it doesn't do this, then you risk frying all the expensive ATC equipment and then they are offline good. Lastly the radar computers, radios. and servers take several minutes to boot back up after power has been restored. All in all this takes time for the backup generators to kick in and for equipment to boot back up. Its not like the movies, nothing is instant when backup power comes online.
ATC: Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, lost power, we’re declaring emergency 747Heavy: Roger ATC, it is May day, say intentions ATC: requesting vectors for the nearest canteen, we’re gonna hold for lunch for about an hour 747Heavy: received ATC, take a left turn for an elevator, go FL01, hold short of the Ladies bathroom, turn right for the canteen ATC: 747Heavy, we just lost our allowance, I don’t think we’ll be able to make it to the canteen, what other options are available, maybe McDonalds, KFC? 747Heavy: Roger ATC, standby. When able, state souls in office and money in pounds ATC: that’ll be 2 souls and, can I give you the money in dollars? We have two dollars Cessna420: that’s less than a pound guys 747Heavy: thank you Cessna420 ATC: I don’t think we’ll be able to make any canteen, we’re running low on lunch money, is the cheapest burger $5? 747Heavy: that is affirm ATC, maybe try the ice cream truck? 747Heavy ATC: we’re can’t make it ATC: we’re gonna be in …. …vending machine, … 747Heavy: ATC state your position 747Heavy: ATC do you copy? A320Blue: I think he said they’re gonna be by the vending machine 747Heavy: Roger A320Blue, we have the food trucks rolling already
3:30 What does it mean, "Maintain VFR". I guess he's telling all traffics to separate themselves from each other visually (or with TCAS or whatever), but that doesn't mean revert from IFR to VFR, right?
marbe166 Nope, you are still IFR but for traffic separation purposes you are in charge of visually detecting and avoiding other traffic. Basically means your are not provided ATC services. Remember you can do a visual approach while on IFR.
The audio quality you're hearing is a function of the location of the receiving antenna used for the recording. The airplanes, which were at altitude, could probably hear the MIA ground station just fine.
Leonardo Chapman right.. and I’m explaining why it’s a bad joke... don’t be too eager to woooosh that you don’t understand what someone’s saying Also, why was your first reply so serious if it was a joke? But then You revert to “it was just a joke” when you realized your comment was pointless
Attention all pilots! Miami ATC is in great danger and needs your help. All they need is your credit card number, the last three digits, exportation month and year. But you gotta be quick so they can achieve working radar again.
I think they mean main communications. If you notice, all ATC transmissions contain a lot more static than usual, so they're probably using backup or even handheld transceivers to communicate.
@CalvinV7 I just see the mad dash pulling the handhelds out of the closet and ripping packs of AA batteries open and trying to cram them in the radios.
ATControlers are acturly trained to work in situations with no radar. Technically how they did it in the old days with maps and pins and where pilots keep informing them of their local so ye this is an extremely stressful job
yeah but stuff now is designed assuming radar is working so obviously gonna be a lot harder (even tho i would assume they're all properly trained to work with zero radar)
@@YaofuZhou "Wow, they just landed that plane perfectly!" The person in this thread: "People have literally been doing this since the Advent of the plane and the airport." Better?
And my question is, in today's world of redundancies and fail-over standby power backups, how in the hell is this possible and who is responsible for this mess?
Theoretically when the computer goes down the screens can be pulled out and lay flat like a table. Small pieces of transparent acetate can be placed over the primary targets to identify them. If there is no radar the controllers can look at their sector map and visualize where the planes are by radio communications and keeping track of them with notations of their clearances on the paper strips. They call it "manual control" and it's the first thing they learn at the FAA academy in Oklahoma City. That's what these controllers were attempting to do but, in place like Miami, it's a pipe dream.
The only thing keeping a system from 'virtually 100%' reliability is (enforced) resource scarcity, which is a big thing in the USA. Many incidents, even when rare occurences, could still have been easily avoided, but saving lives is always weighted against profitability. (That's why I personally don't consider air travel safer than car travel. Too many variables not in my control.) Human error is often a result of that situation, too. Basically, these things are symptoms and warning signs of flaws in the system that need to be fixed and actually needed to be fixed earlier but weren't. "Professionality" is to some degree a damn PR myth.
I experienced something like this about 30 years ago in Phoenix. I was on a United flight back when they provided ATC radio on the entertainment system. This was before TCAS or ADS-B, so the "backup" was just the two sets of eyeballs up front. We had just handed off to departure when they lost all radar. I was listening VERY carefully, and in the stress of the moment some callsigns were mixed up by ATC - including US! Our crew was on the ball, and called for confirmation after a screwy instruction, and ATC corrected the error. As this was a radar site failure (not just power outage), Albuquerque Center also lost our sector. It took nearly 20 minutes to get things back online. I definitely complimented our crew for catching the error and handling things smoothly. They were surprised anybody had been listening!
@@lindsybacon6742 You need to know the airline call sign (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airline_codes) for your airline plus the flight number. Some are simple. For example an American Airlines flight might be "American 2345", but British Airways might be "Speedbird 1", or South African Airways might be "Springbok 476". It's pretty easy, and the call signs can be very interesting.
I love how calm everyone is. It gives me great confidence to step on to an aircraft knowing that even in extremely high pressure situations, the atc and pilots don't panic and just move to plan b.
When the fecal matter splatters the rotary impeller you don't have TIME to panic. You just clench your gut, work your lists, and keep your eyeballs all over the sky :D
Algorithimic Process they do have backup power it just takes a while to boot up. Also, if my friend at MIA center told me correctly the tech is ancient at MIA center.
Boodieman72 Costs. And environment. It makes no sense to let really really big diesel generators run 24/7/365. They would also break every year or so, and would need refuel allthetime. Just makes no goddamn sense. They have backup batteries to immediately kick in, but they can only power ILS/Basic radio stuff. Not a MW radar.
I live right next to the Miami airport, I can tell you this has happened several times over the years. You legit can see 10 or so planes looping around eastward to and from Miami beach whenever theres some sort of emergency. They usually get diverted to FT lauderdale or west palm beach.
For those commenting about backup power. As someone who installs and maintains backup power systems I have to chime in here. First, no system is 100% fail safe. even with redundancies, the failure rate is never 0. Second, with facilities of these size, yes they do have backup up generator systems but keep this in mind: When power is lost, the generator has to wait, usually about 1 minutes before it fires up. It does this incase regular grid power comes back on in under that minute. After that minute the generator initiates it startup sequence which can take another minute or two. Once its warmed up, the system needs to engage the transfer switch which directs all or necessary circuits from regular grid power to backup generator power. Think of it like a giant light switch. The transfer switch computers needs to make sure the power coming from the generator is accurate in voltage and matches the equipment that will be drawing from it. If it doesn't do this, then you risk frying all the expensive ATC equipment and then they are offline good. Lastly the radar computers, radios. and servers take several minutes to boot back up after power has been restored. All in all this takes time for the backup generators to kick in and for equipment to boot back up. Its not like the movies, nothing is instant when backup power comes online.
yeah the big ass generators take a few minutes i can only imagine the power reqirements for all there radar and atc computers and transmiters and radios for comunicstion for an airport that large although i have heared of backup batteries to as a bridge between regular power to backup generators but ive only seen it on server farms
Oh, man, the humanity!!! Did you guys get *any* lunch? Did they tell you to drive to the location six miles away and just keep driving around the block? I am actually shaking just thinking about it.
@@sludge4125 we got free lunches so that really wasnt the problem. It was having to write every item on carbon reciepts and only accept cash and customers getting pissed while we add their orders up and make change and tell them we cant take their card.
I've had this happen to me only once in my flying history....I'm talking about a real inflight experience, not on a simulator where you can pause the action and wonder about what to do next...the real deal with real big lumps of metal, full of real people, flying blind in very close company with other big lumps of metal! Someone was on my side that night...because I had enough fuel and remaining endurance, I was able to fly back up to cruising altitude and return to my departure point, but it was a very tense 10 minutes. Just in case anyone is wondering, the intended airport was under a very heavy mortar attack and EVERYTHING was out of action and at around 3am, it was very dark...TCAS was not something commonly found on aircraft back then. I like this video, mainly because I can hear everyone trying really hard to make it work....doing their jobs to the best of their ability and calling on every inch of their experience to keep you safe.
I learn so much from these videos! I'm planning to become ATC, even though im just a kid im starting early. Any terms i hear i dont know i look them up, then once i know i use them in my ATC simuilator (unmatched atc)
join VATSIM, you will learn all the real-world procedures and radio terms. You will get to control virtual traffic people on flight simulator who want real air traffic control not computer. It's fun. I worked JFK from clearance delivery to ground, tower and departure. I worked with lots of great kids who all grew up to work in aviation, many are FAA controllers and pilots now. We all keep in touch :)
One of my favorite episodes yet. Exciting yet nerve-wracking to listen too. All of them always handle the craziest situations sounding calm like nothing is even happening. Great work!
I guess the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) was working (else the radio would be down too), but apparently a lot of their systems went down though and it took them a while to reboot everything.
They could also be using handheld radios, which might explain why they're so unsure of people being able to hear them. Much weaker than their usual transmitters and further attenuated by being indoors.
@@jaalan7896 Lotta computers, radios, and radars all hanging off a big UPS, just waiting for the generator to spool up and the ATS to throw... Most redundant power scenarios nowadays design for a UPS capacity just big enough to hold the load up long enough for the generator to crank a couple times, start, and stabilize. No generator, no luck. :-| See it in IT all the time.
I’m going to be honest here, I was a shift leader at Domino’s pizza and our sticker machine went down that prints out each individual sticker per ordered item and also has the number order on each sticker to keep your order together per item and that also stopped the automatic printing of stickers from online orders and we did not stay this calm. It was an absolute madhouse because we were making whatever orders popped up on the screen between online orders and phone orders but we had no stickers to label the boxes so nobody knew who ordered what, or anything. It caused a major backup for the oven catcher and before we knew it we had pizzas sitting in boxes on top of the oven, every inch of the heat rack was taken and we then had to resort to pulling all the delivery bags off that rack and we covered that rack with more orders. It was basically like flying a plane with nothing but a yoke and where the ATC was telling you to go or like in this situation planes everywhere but nobody could be told where to go without the radar. They did a fantastic job staying calm and keeping everyone safe.
I mean, it's understandable. These guys deal with hundreds of potential deaths on the daily, so they train and follow instructions and contingencies very rigorously. Domino's is not quite as life or death, despite pizza being a vital service 😜
I've been in a FAA Radar Site. The backup power at that site was well thought out. Backup consisted of two large generators plus a huge room full of Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) batteries. For a site of this type to "go black" something extraordinary bad and unusual would have to occur. The site I visited was on a mountain top and had on-site personnel 24/7. There was also a "comments mention" of the time required to place backup generators on line - the suggestion was "5 minutes". While I don't know the start-up parameters at an FAA site, numerous large Telco sites have Backup Generators that come on line within a matter of seconds with 50 Kilowatts to 1 Megawatt after the loss of commercial primary power. The generators are kept warm when not running with coolant heaters and oil heaters. There's also the possibility that the radar was fine but they lost the communications feed to ATC on a microwave or fiber route.
they probably lost power in the control room not the radio arrays and they probably use a single large UPS for the whole room which explains the loss of everything
im with you @the erod...etc ive been working on sites where contractors doing airport maint. work have severed the fibre link between the shacks and tower, took less than a minute to change over to the secondary system. Wernt as many aircraft in the pattern, but no delay. they were even quicker sending a car out to find the unlucky sod who cut it as well.
The thing about having a UPS room filled with batteries and a generator before that, is that if there is something between the UPS room and the Control room that let the magic smoke out and takes down the Circuit Breaker or RCBO in the room, if there isn't battery backups in each individual equipment, then there is no use for UPS or Generator because those are mitigating for external power issues. This is most likely an internal power issue, and the person responsible for restoring the power had to first identify what caused it, remove it from the grid and then reset the breakers, plus the time to boot all the equipment. That is why In a hospital for instance all the life support equipment either comes with internal batteries or have an external dedicated UPS for at least 30min of autonomy. Even the servers in the server room had dual power supplies each connected to a different UPS unit inside the room to avoid any downtime.
@J Hemphill 3rd language after Dutch and Norwegian 😁 There was a typo in the word ''Literally'' so that was what I changed. But I understand you mean she can't be ''literrally'' speaking like a machine gun. It is of course figurative. But some people say things this way to (try) and make their comment more funny. I got that from a Mr Jeremy Clarkson. One exaggerates and that makes the statement more funny without anyone actually missing the point of what you try to say. But we do agree that she speaks so fast it becomes a bit ridiculous right ? Considering how important it is that everyone understands her and the fact that if she would have to repeat herself once in a while she might actually loose more time than just saying it properly the first time.
When ATC loses power like that... they gotta go old school... REALLY old school. Like from the ancient days of aviation when radar didn't yet exist. All paper tracking, map plotting, altitude mapping, and mass glide slope calculations. Stress in that control room went through the ROOF that day for certain!
Every airport should have a subscription for it. I bet even the UI is more intuitive, while missing some ATC functionality. Insurance probably wouldn't like it..
MillionFoul on american ground yes, there is a delay due to the aircraft data being provided by the FAA. If actual ADS-B feeds are used, there's no delay whatsoever
ADS-B isn't carried by all aircraft, and some transponders only have limited capabilities. If ATC loses primary radar, or their computers go down so they can't see the transponders things get dangerous fast -- and remember the vast majority of planes are in general aviation and often have less capable equipment than a commercial jetliner has. Some can't even do ILS and may approach on a VOR radial. And remember, many jets can only slow down to maybe 150-160 knots even with full flaps. Some GA aircraft come in at 80 or so! The speed differential means without radar, separation is going to become challenging and will really eat into the airport's capacity.
when power is lost the only thing you have is procedural control.. reports of aircraft over specific waypoints as seen here.. great job from everyone great vid!
It’s crazy how everyone worked together and stayed calm during this. Imagine how the ATC had to frantically get the word out that their radar was down and other things may follow. They had to talk to with all nearby planes and tell them where to blindly go based on the pilots word. That takes some skill.
Excuse a dumb question from the inexperienced. Not in the flight industry at all (healthcare) but I've been flying frequently for work over the last 12 months and am so impressed by and grateful for what you all do. And therefore obsessed with these videos. What are the five-letter acronyms? i.e. WAKED, FISEL, NOVAE, GRITT, PABOY. Are they radar reference points? Are they acronyms, or just five-letter names that get capitalised. If so, how are they named? I'm so intrigued!
They refer to waypoints, their names aren't acronyms; but are chosen to be pronounceable and not easily confused with other nearby waypoints. They sometimes have significance to local landmarks, or contain in-jokes. eg. waypoints near Orlando are related to Disney characters: MINEE, POPYE, TWETY, BURRD, DAFIE
😬😳 I learned something new today.....have never healed of ATC Zero!! That must have been quite a scene at ATC. They did a good job....although you could hear that bit of extra tension in their voices. Thanks VASAviation 👍🏻
What a nightmare. Can you imagine going back to 50's atc tech, shuffling icons manually on a chunk of cardboard that someone used a Sharpie to draw the airport and airspace on?
Communication would probably be a lot easier if it didn't sound like all aircraft were connected to the tower via an impossibly long piece of string and some tin cans... Is there a reason all aviation microphones sound like they were designed and built a few years before Edison discovered electricity?
It's a function of encoding, modulation and location. Aviation communications are AM, and the receivers for LiveATC et al are usually closer to the airport than the aircraft. AM works best with gobs of transmission power to break through the noise floor. (the static) The double re-encoding (Once for LiveATC, a second for RU-vid) with lossy audio codecs for internet transmission tends to freak out over lots of static. (Same for video. Here's the video example of the same problem: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-r6Rp-uo6HmI.html) To get around the encoder hurdle of the LiveATC side, you can reasonably assume that the audio is run through a bandpass filter that clips the sound at the higher frequencies, then run through a companding filter. And the compression (bit rate) is low to keep it able to be streamed by almost any internet connection. Basically, you hear the tower the best because the antenna is closer to it and it's very much louder than the static, meaning less noise gets passed on to the audio encoder. Move the antenna to an aircraft, and the broadcast from that aircraft would be outstanding and the tower transmissions would be "down in the mud". Now as for the actual microphones: The FAA is a cruel mistress: Things don't keep up with the times because of "safety": Same reason there's an ashtray in the lavatory even though smoking isn't permitted on most airlines, same reason it took over a decade to figure out that, yes, in fact, cell phones don't interfere with GPS or navaids, and same reason why the FAA are taking their sweet time with ADS-B. Everything has to be tested for safety even if it's blindingly obvious that it's safer the new way.
Operator 801 they aren't as bad as this usually slightly better when in flight, it's just the receiver and recorder used to capture audio, however it's to do with frequency I think plane radios use hf which doesn't allow good quality, like watching a RU-vid video in 360p, you know what's going on but not perfect
@@MatthijsvanDuin sorry did a misstake there anyhow handheld radios are most likely to be used and ATC probably got some fancy stuff that have a good range
The pilot of FLG538 is my favourite by far (08:02, 08:12, 08:45, 08:51, 10:43). Such a phlegmatic voice, a sharp contrast to the quick and tense voice of the ATC woman.
Tip: Put the "Pause to read" disclaimer on the top of the slide, rather than the bottom. I read top to bottom, and I need to read the disclaimer first for it to be useful.
It is. This channel uses recordings from ground based receivers. They can't receive signals as far away as airborne receivers. They're also subjected to much more man made and natural interference.
Out of couriosity: What is meant by "switch to VFR"? I understand the difference between IFR and VFR. But isn't it a huge risk if multiple jets approach Miami and everyone has to look out of their windows to prevent any collisions? Or is every pilot just putting trust in their TCAS? In general aviation it might be not a big deal, but I don't understand how it works with huge airports.
Every aircraft lost the use of its ability to view out the wind shield, as well as the ability of the ground to see aircraft. Scary as hell given the speed of the aircraft and how useless unaided personal vision in an airborne aircraft might be. The lack of a backup is shocking, remember the jackass that blew up the Chicago center and how long I took to return the entire national system to normal?
Can anyone tell me what they’re actually doing during this time? Are they on to phone to nearby radars like Ft Lauderdale and getting updates on positions? Or do they break out paper maps and start scribbling down positions according to what the planes checking in report?
Great job by everyone. Need to remember the radar antennas might be miles away from the ATC building. There's a very real chance that something happened in the feed to the controllers. The actual ATC building has backup generators that will come on line immediately. However, if the problem is in the circuits, they are protected by breakers. The real cause has to be located and fixed. I wasn't flying when Chicago Center had a fire and was shut down. What a day that must have been.
This is nothing compared to that time when terrorists took over all communications and radar for Washington Dulles airport back in 1990. They even changed the ILS and made a plane crash. If not for one cop they'd have gotten away in a 747.
This is why I always preferred working commercial ferries instead of airliners.lol any comm or traffic issues coming into port we just cut engines and n bob around for a while till they sort it out. Considering the stakes this lot sounded far calmer and in control over the radio than a lot of harbour masters if things hit the fan.
Makes me so thankful for the years of being a Flight Attendant and never preparing the cabin for an Emergency. Thank God. Not saying we didn’t have Emergencies on board, we just never had to do an evacuation. Ugh
Btw they can just revert to non radar. We practice that all the time. Just limits capacity a lot. There is a list of things we are required to report. And of course no vectors.
I'd think radio would be the priority. If you have radio but no radar you can manually map it by hand. If you have radar but no radio you can watch dozens of aircraft waiting for instructions and you can't tell them anything.
My goodness that one ATC worker spoke extremely fast. I get you have to keep a pace up, but geez, how did people understand what she was saying half the time. XD
Kudos to the pro's on the ground and in the plane's for the fabulous handling of a nightmare, and preventing a total class A Charlie Foxtrot!! Well Done ladies and gentlemen WELL DONE!!
Had experienced this once back in 95, sitting in MIA on the tarmac for a couple of hours after lighting struck the tower to get out of MIA to FRA. Due the complete loss of power on the airport we couldn't even get back to the gate. They shut down the engines after some time and had the plane run on the APU without AC to preserve fuel.
What a fiasco! The only pilot with any clue was an Englishman in a Cherokee. I guess he’s used to VFR, but surely all these guys started out VFR in small planes. First ATC transmission should be very clear, to all stations, cancelling radar service, cancelling IFR clearance and instructing all traffic to maintain VFR and visual separation. Not just everyone blindly transmitting “we’ve lost everything” like headless chickens! Bloody unprofessional!
kudos to all the atc crews who kept everything going in the emergency. power failures are always disruptive. is there no backup? it’d seem that something as vital as radar would have some sort of redundant backup so that if the power failed, there’d be no loss of service. sorry, i don’t know much about aviation, so if my questions seem inane, forgive me for my lack of knowledge.
Big old facilities like that have backup generator systems. But there is a delay before the Jenny's fire over in case normal power comes back on. And then it takes a little bit of time for those Genny's to fully power up and stabilize their output before it can be then transitioned into the building's grid otherwise you risk blowing millions of dollars worth of equipment. And if you hear the quality of the radio transmissions at the beginning where ATC is putting out the first calls. You can hear clean and clear radio but then after that it goes to very staticy. So that would be their backup battery systems beside their equipment on their floor allowed them to offline their equipment safely to avoid damage from a grid reboot. But back up battery units in that kind of a setting only have about 10 minutes worth of power for the amount of things that are plugged in. At home some of them would be able to last multiple hours because we'd only have one or two things plugged in.