Equipment Failure Halts All Flights in Memphis Area

The FAA halted all airline flights within 250 miles of Memphis, Tenn. on Sept. 25, 2007, after communications equipment failed at the regional Air Route Traffic Control Center located there, preventing the updating of radar data. Memphis International Airport handles more cargo traffic than any other airport in the world, because it is the location of the main FedEx Express package-sorting hub. FedEx said it had to divert a \"small number\" of flights, but that the airport soon re-opened and the company expected \"minimal impact\" on its air operations in the peak overnight period. Credit: FedEx Corporation

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- The Federal Aviation Administration shut down all airline traffic within 250 miles of Memphis on Tuesday, grounding dozens of passenger and cargo flights around the country, because communications equipment had failed at the regional air-traffic control center there.

Air-traffic control centers in adjacent regions handled flights that were already in the air when the problem was discovered, FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said. "The airspace was completely cleared by 1:30 (p.m.) Eastern time," she said.

High-altitude flights through the region -- which includes parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee -- were discontinued while the equipment was being fixed.

"What we did is put a ground stop in place for any flight that would transition through that airspace. We held them on the ground wherever they were, whether it was Miami, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston," Bergen said.

By 3 p.m. EDT, the FAA started allowing departing and arriving flights to resume at airports inside the 250-mile radius. Flights from other U.S. airports were still being rerouted around the Memphis region.

The FAA's action was having a ripple effect in several airports.

David Magana, a spokesman at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, said 26 flights were being held Tuesday afternoon for departure and 49 have been canceled. DFW officials are making plans in case the problem strands travelers.

"At this point our operations team and the airlines operations teams are obviously looking at the situation, and we're preparing for the eventuality that we might have to have guests," Magana said.

In Nashville, 12 Northwest Airlines flights were diverted, and 25 to 30 departures had been delayed one to two hours, airport spokeswoman Emily Richard said. Disruptions affecting fewer flights were reported at airports in St. Louis, Miami, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Ky., and Kansas City, Mo.

No major problems were reported at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport or Chicago's O'Hare and Midway airports, aviation officials said.

Memphis, with the headquarters of shipping giant FedEx Corp., is the world's busiest airport for cargo, handling 4.08 million tons of air freight in 2006. The Memphis airport also is a hub for Northwest Airlines.

It was not immediately clear how much the flight disruptions had affected FedEx, company spokesman Jess Bunn said. The busiest part of the company's day is early in the morning.

Bergen said the FAA did not know how long it would take to fix equipment at the Air Route Traffic Control Center at Memphis or have an immediate number on how many flights were affected. She said she did not know what caused the equipment failure.

"There was failure in communications equipment and there also was a failure of radar data from three out of nine radar sites," Bergen said. "The radar sites were working, but the data was not being fed into the center."

The Memphis center is one of 20 around the country. It handled almost 3 million flights last year, ranking it ninth among the 20.

"It's a big airspace, and there are lots of airplanes," Bergen said. 

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