FAILED POWER SOURCE BACK IN OPERATION

January 05, 2000

O'HARE AIRPORT A main power source that failed at O'Hare International Airport Monday, briefly knocking out air-traffic radar and communications equipment, was back up and running normally Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

The outage was blamed on a power surge inside MCI WorldCom equipment that relays flight arrival and departure information between the O'Hare tower and an FAA facility in Elgin. It lasted for two minutes Monday and resulted in some flight delays.

"The event was not caused by Y2K or the failure of FAA air-traffic equipment," said FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro, adding that the switch back to the main power source was made late Monday so it wouldn't inconvenience airline passengers. "The malfunction occurred at the power source manned by MCI."

A backup diesel generator was used until the primary electrical power source was re-established, said Linda Laughlin, a spokeswoman for MCI WorldCom.

[ENDS]

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), January 05, 2000

Answers

Thanks. More proof it's starting to unwind now!!

-- trackerofY2K (blessyou@doom.net), January 05, 2000.

So... what caused the power surge?

-- skep (Idon't@buyit.com), January 05, 2000.

flying squirrels, what else...

-- Patrick Lastella (Lastella1@aol.com), January 05, 2000.

And the remaining question which was posed on earlier threads addressing the O'Hare outage, is why, instead of funning of the commercial grid, is O'Hare on a "main source" generator, even a high- tech one provided by MCI?

-- SH (squirrel@huntr.com), January 05, 2000.