Skip to footer

Why 500 flights out of Chicago were cancelled

An electrical fire at an air traffic control facility near Chicago, halted all flights at O'Hare and Midway airports Tuesday afternoon and shutting down one of the nation's busiest aviation crossroads.

  • By Staff Associated Press

| Chicago

An electrical fire triggered by a faulty bathroom exhaust fan forced the evacuation of an air traffic control facility near Chicago, halting all flights at the city's two airports and shutting down one of the nation's busiest aviation crossroads.

Controllers were allowed to return to the facility in suburban Elgin about two hours later, but it was not immediately clear when flights would resume.

Elgin Fire Capt. Anthony Bialek said a bathroom exhaust fan in a ceiling overheated and melted some wires and smoke was pushed throughout the facility's ventilation system.

The Federal Aviation Administration said all its personnel were evacuated from the Chicago Terminal Radar Approach Control, or TRACON, facility at around 11:30 a.m.

Bialek says it took about an hour to find the source of the smoke. There were no injuries.

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 showed a large backup of aircraft along taxiways at O'Hare. Inside the terminals, people trying to rebook on later flights formed long lines.

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.

Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman Karen Pride said she has not yet gotten word on whether flights have resumed.

The FAA did not have an update.

O'Hare airport is the second-busiest 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 aviation tracking website FlightAware.com showed O'Hare cancellations mounting to over 500 by about 2:30 p.m. Disruptions were less severe at Midway.

A computer glitch at a similar facility last month forced a 45-minute shutdown at Los Angeles International Airport.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Why 500 flights out of Chicago were cancelled
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0513/Why-500-flights-out-of-Chicago-were-cancelled
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe