Alerts Sign-up
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has clarified the cause of an air traffic control (ATC) outage at Denver International Airport last month. Initially reported by local news station Denver7, the incident involved up to 20 aircraft unable to communicate with controllers for six minutes on May 12 due to radio transmitter outages.
The FAA contested this report, stating that the communication disruption lasted only 90 seconds. The agency attributed the issue to faulty radio transmitters, which have since been repaired or replaced. "Overlapping outages to radio transmitters and circuits caused the 90-second communications interruption at the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center on May 12," stated the FAA.
Denver7 had reported multiple transmitter outages at the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center in Longmont, responsible for airspace in Colorado and parts of six neighboring states. According to sources, communication was lost until a controller used a guard line typically reserved for emergencies to contact a pilot who then relayed instructions to other aircraft.
