Chicago arson: Airlines assessing backlog

[WASHINGTON] Airlines were assessing on Sunday how many flights they could resume two days after an employee at an air-traffic control centre allegedly set fire to equipment before attempting suicide.

More than 670 flights were cancelled on Saturday at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, the nation's second-busiest, and 125 at the Chicago Midway International Airport because of the incident at a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) centre near the city, the Chicago Department of Aviation said.

More than 2,000 flights were cancelled on Friday as delays spread to hubs from New York to Dallas, according to tracking website FlightAware.com.

"I want to get home," Joe Trymbiski, 41, said as he awaited a Southwest Airlines Co flight out of Midway after his Sept 26 United Continental Holdings Inc flight to Philadelphia out of O'Hare and a rebooked one got cancelled. "You're supposed to leave yesterday, you get rebooked, and then it's a whole other day where you don't know what's going on."

The damaged facility, the Chicago En Route centre in Aurora, Illinois, oversees high-altitude traffic across the Midwest. The authorities arrested Brian Howard, 36, a contract worker at the centre, after they found him in the basement of the building cutting his throat, according to a court filing.

The FAA sent staff to clean up the facility, dry out equipment harmed by water, assess the damage and evaluate a timeline for restoration of services following the fire and attempted suicide in the centre's telecommunications room, the agency said on Saturday.

United cancelled a third of its 480 departures from O'Hare on Saturday and was monitoring the situation for Sunday, said Mary Clark, a spokeswoman. Delta Air Lines Inc said it cancelled 40 flights on Saturday after 289 cancellations on Friday and was evaluating its Sunday schedule.

Rose Quyn, 39, who had spent the week in Chicago with her husband, arrived at Midway to find her Delta flight home to California had been cancelled until Sunday.

"Nobody called," Ms Quyn said at Midway as her husband busily spoke on the phone nearby after learning they were stranded. "Nobody told us it got cancelled. Now we have to find where we'll stay."

A command centre in Warrenton, Virginia is working with airlines that serve the Chicago-area airports to minimise disruptions, the FAA said.

Controllers at centres near Cleveland, Minneapolis and other locations set up special sectors to help handle traffic near Chicago, Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union, said.

The process of assessing equipment damage was delayed by blood covering the crime scene, said a person familiar with the incident, who asked not to be identified because of a continuing investigation.

If the main computers and communication systems were destroyed, air-traffic control in that area of the Midwest may have to be moved to a remote facility and controllers will be temporarily transferred there, said the person.

American Airlines Group Inc, which has a hub at O'Hare, estimated it would cancel 308 flights, spokesman Josh Freed said on Saturday.

Southwest cancelled 110 flights on Saturday, spokeswoman Michelle Agnew said in a statement.

Howard, of Naperville, Illinois, was charged in US District Court in Chicago with destruction of aircraft facilities in connection with the fire.

He arrived at the building, about 65km west of Chicago, at 5.06am, dragging a suitcase, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation affidavit filed in court. About an hour later, police and firefighters responded to a call about smoke.

Paramedics followed a trail of blood to the basement, where they saw a floor panel that had been opened to expose telecommunication cables, according to the affidavit.

They found Howard, shirtless with cut wounds to his arms, in the process of using a knife to slice his throat, according to the document.

About 30 minutes after he had entered the building, a message was posted on a Facebook account held in Howard's name saying he was about to take out the centre "and my life", according to the affidavit. "Do your best to move on quickly from me please," the message said.

Howard survived and was being treated at a hospital. He faces a possible sentence of as many as 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of US$250,000.

He had worked on telecommunications in the facility for about eight years, according to the affidavit. He was recently told he would be transferred to Hawaii.

The suspect was an employee of Harris Corp, an FAA contractor, and has been fired, said Jim Burke, a spokesman for the Melbourne, Florida-based company.

Mr Burke said the company operates FAA communications equipment at the Aurora centre, and nationally, and is in the process of upgrading it.

One of 20 en route US air-traffic control centres, the Aurora facility monitors flights that are beyond 50km or 65km of an airport and typically above 15,000 feet, said Gregory "Sid" McGuirk, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Airlines cancelled 2,104 flights in the United States on Sept 26, according to FlightAware.com. That's still short of the disruptions associated with heavy winter snowfalls, such as the 7,100 trips scrubbed on Feb 13, the most in the US since 2012's Hurricane Sandy.

"I just keep my fingers crossed," Raajitha Dsara, a 30-year pregnant woman who was visiting a cousin in Chicago and was initially scheduled to fly to her new home in Portland at 7.30pm on Sept 26, said at Midway. - Bloomberg