I-Team: FAA warned about possible air traffic sabotage years ago

AURORA, Ill. (WLS) -- The ABC7 Eyewitness News I-Team has learned that red flags were raised years ago about how sabotage or terrorism could lead to the air travel mess triggered by one man.

There is word Sunday night that it will be more than two weeks before the FAA facility in Aurora is operating normally again.

The I-Team has learned that "years" before 9/11, and 16 years before Friday's sabotage, government investigators warned the FAA about crippling consequences similar to what we're seeing now.

The air traffic controllers union says this shutdown is one of the most challenging situations faced by controllers and the FAA since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

A disgruntled worker with access and opportunity brought air traffic control to a standstill in Chicago.

The head of the FAA told Illinois' senior senator in a phone call Sunday that the private contractor destroyed 23 of 29 control racks. Radar lines were cut. Computers set ablaze. The damage from the sabotage and subsequent firefighting effort - so severe the FAA is forced to rebuild its infrastructure in separate section of the Aurora air traffic control center.

"They are hoping they can notify airlines still (Sunday) what they can expect (Monday), in terms of airline capacity. And they're hoping by the end of this week to be back into normal operations," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois).

As the FAA struggles to recover, the ABC7 I-Team uncovers a federal report that should have given the agency ample time to create a contingency plan.

In 1998: The first paragraph of a GAO investigation declared: "Failure to adequately protect these systems, as well as the facilities that house them, could cause nationwide disruption of air traffic or even loss of life due to collisions."

In the 16 years since that report was issued, the FAA has not developed a single site back-up control center that could be quickly activated in the event a saboteur, or terrorists, bring a control facility down.

Instead, the plan is to add work to, at times, already over-burdened air traffic control facilities.

"The FAA has made a fulltime commitment to this," Durbin said. "Their employees are on 24-hour shifts to move into this as quickly as possible."

Air traffic controllers from the Aurora center are now helping out at the back-up facilities operating two to a radar scope and in some cases have had to use phone and fax to manually hand off control of flights and establish schedules.

Sunday, the FAA reports the makeshift system was only able to accommodate 60 percent of typical traffic at O'Hare, 75 percent at Midway.

The FAA predicts the air traffic control center in aurora won't be back on-line until October 13.

Sunday night, despite what Durbin said, an FAA spokesperson could not say if they think they'll be able to get back to full capacity between now and mid-October, when Aurora is back in service.