This is my first post upon registration. I’m researching a novel and, in its first chapter, there is a TRACON blackout over the following states SC (100%), NC (97.01%), southern VA (23.70%), eastern GA (63.63%), and the northern Jacksonville area of FL (5.63%).
I am curious to know - on average - how many planes would be in the air over this area and how many would be preparing to take off from within or just adjacent to it.
I would also like to know how air traffic outside the area would be redirected and/or grounded.
I have a preliminary map of the zone in question but it is a work-in-progress and subject to change. If anyone would like to review it, PM me and I’ll provide a link.
Many thanks,
Thom
P.S. Forgive this post’s placement. I wasn’t quite sure what heading it belonged to.
In 2004 (I think that’s the correct year) SoCal Approach, the busiest TRACON in the world, shut down because of a brush fire. They literally left and locked the door for the better part of a day. LA Center took over the airspace. I was connecting from DFW to John Wayne on American Airlines and my flight was canceled. I re-booked to a flight that departed an hour earlier. We did make 2 360’s over Palm Springs but that was the worst of it.
What does Center do? Big question, if you’re writing a book you should learn this stuff first. Notice how small a TRACON’s airspace is compared to a Center.
Looking at the map Frank provided and your description of the TRACON outage in your book it looks like you are really talking about a Jacksonville Center failure. If your book revolves around a radar failure throughout the entire center (highly unlikely) there are backup plans in place. If you are talking about an entire center going dark (even more unlikely) then the towers and TRACONs within the area would expand as much as possible to provide at least basic traffic separation services. It would be quite a scramble but the backup plans do exist.
To way oversimplify:
Control Tower: handles all aircraft within 5 miles of the airport up to a couple of thousand feet depending on the airspace classification at that airport. Most airports are not busy enough to need a control tower.
TRACON (Terminal Radar Approach Control): Provides radar service to participating aircraft outside the tower’s area out to anywhere from 30 to as much as 60 miles from the primary airport and at altitudes up to around 10,000 ft. These dimensions vary from one airport to the next.
Center: Handles everything else which is the majority of the airspace out there.
To also oversimplify: Not all aircraft are required to be in contact with approach control or center controllers.
This is probably as clear as mud, but keep asking. As airplane enthusiasts we want you to get a realistic picture, your story will be the better for it.
I remember MANY years ago (think 70’s) when I was flying out of CMX they built a new Minneapolis Center (ZMP on the map). Through careful planning they put in redundant cabling for remote radar and radio sites, one going East from the facility and the other West. HOWEVER, they ran both cables in a common trench from the highway up to the building. Guess where the backhoe cut the cable. The backhoe is the best underground cable locator no matter what anyone tells you!
Fortunately at that time we still had Flight Service Stations so everything was back to radio position reports, holds and expect further clearance times etc. I could just imaging the center controllers hunched over their now horizontal screens pushing shrimp boats around!
Thank you for the answers and clarifications to this point.
What I mean by blackout is lose of radar, radio, and power within the zone. I’ve determined that there might be about 60 planes (regardless of type) within my zone. There would be some planes on the fringe; perhaps as many as ten.
I presume that other traffic would be routed around the zone. It seems likely that air traffic controllers would make attempts to contact the planes on the fringe for visual confirmation on any planes within the zone.
This is not a novel about a terrorist attack although certainly it may be seen to have parallels. Some characters in it might even suppose it to be so.
I am specifically interested in what directions for reroutes, emergency landings, and apparently lost planes would sound like. How is the FAA informed of a crisis? And what qualifies as a situation Defense should be involved with?
Helicopters operate 99% of the time on Visual Flight Rules (VFR) so wouldn’t be affected by an outage at the ATC center. The same with light aircraft, maybe 95% of them are VFR at any time.
