FAA: Fire-damaged flight control center to reopen Sunday

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is planning to reopen a suburban Chicago air traffic control facility on Sunday that was damaged in a fire last month. 

The agency said it was close to reopening its Chicago En Route Center in Aurora, Ill., which helps guides flights into the city’s O’Hare and Midway international airports. 

The Aurora facility has been closed since it was set on fire by an FAA employee on Sept. 26 in an apparent suicide attempt. 

{mosads}The FAA said late Tuesday evening that it was on track to reopen the fire-damaged facility as early as this weekend. 

 “An FAA integrated transition team has developed a plan to transfer air traffic services back to the Chicago En Route Center in Aurora, IL during the night of Sunday, Oct. 12 and the early morning of Monday, Oct. 13,” the agency said in a statement. 

“FAA technical teams will complete equipment and system testing over the next few days at Chicago Center and conduct flight checks before they fully restore and connect the telecommunications network and other services at the facility,” the FAA statement continued. 

The damage from the fire resulted in nearly 4,000 flights to airports in the Chicago area being delayed during the final weekend in September. 

FAA officials said in their latest update that it has been able to develop workarounds to return flight service in Chicago to normal levels while the Aurora facility has been closed for repairs. 

“The FAA continued to manage high air traffic levels in and out of the Chicago-area airports [Monday],” the agency said late Tuesday evening. “The number of flights arriving and departing at O’Hare was more than 99 percent of the two-month average for a Monday and Midway flights were more than 91 percent of the two-month average. Today, traffic levels through 1 p.m. CDT were running above 97 percent of the two-month Tuesday average at O’Hare and above 90 percent at Midway.”