Sydney Airport tower fire

[downunderupover]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-29/sydney-airport-fire-alarm-emergency-all-flights-diverted/10952890

Emergency services were called around 11.40am to the air traffic control centre.

Fire and Rescue NSW said 20 people needed to be evacuated from the building.

[Ex FSO GRIFFO]

SY Radio 2GB reporting at 12 noon (SY Time) a smoke alarm was the trigger, but no actual fire located as yet.....
Cheers

[Ex FSO GRIFFO]

SY Radio 2GB now reporting nil fire located, arrivals are 'being processed', although at a 'slower rate', departures still delayed as yet.....
Cheers

[patty50]

Where’d they get all flights diverted from?

ATC told one Jetstar plane he was only looking at a 10 minute delay.

Herc was doing laps overhead but has now gone now gone back to Richmond.

[RickNRoll]

Did they just want a ride down the helter skelter?

[RickNRoll]

An overheating computer let the magic smoke out.

[ACMS]

What was the C-130 doing orbits for? What was it needed for?

[Berealgetreal]

Hope all the guys/girls are ok.

[macbe327]

What was the C-130 doing orbits for? What was it needed for?


in the area by chance and when tower evacuated Center asked them to track overhead to act as a relay between Syd TCU and aircraft on the ground at SYD.

[Capt Fathom]

I thought all the SYD TWR transmitters were in the Blue Mountains?

[Awol57]

I don't work at Sydney so can't say for sure, but typically the towers antennae is on top of the tower or very near by. They may have a repeater in the Blue Mountains, or that may be the TCU site.

[sunnySA]

Departures Radar 135.1 is the nominated "Control" frequency during a contingency, unfortunately they couldn't get two-way comms with the aircraft on the ground at Sydney. Not sure where the 135.1 transmitter / receiver is located, probably the other Sydney Tower, so was it a coverage issue, equipment issue, a new VCS issue or an operator error?

[LeadSled]

An overheating computer let the magic smoke out.
Must have been a Lucas** computer??
Tootle pip!!

** For those of you who understand the Joseph Lucas and Sons Ltd theory of automotive electrics.

[Australopithecus]

Nah, the English never went into computers because they couldn't figure out how to make them leak oil.

(Spent my formative years troubleshooting Lucas “prince of darkness” headlamps,ignition,horn,gauges. And apologising to the parents for the oil slick on the driveway.)

[The Banjo]

Must have been a Dick Smith computer. They create a lot of noise and smoke in an aviation environment.

[missy]

Affordable safety

[Traffic_Is_Er_Was]

Lucas = Leave Us Cold And Stranded

[blow.n.gasket]

Didn’t Lucas Industries teach Magneti Marelli everything they knew ?

[sunnySA]

Surely Paul Everingham can't be correct when the says there's No Plan B for airport

"It won't do Australia's image much good. Sydney Airport, our top gateway, has no emergency control tower facility ("Flights delayed at Sydney Airport after smoke detected in control tower", March 29). The epitome of laid-back perhaps?" - Paul Everingham, Hamilton.
SMH 30/3/2019

[Maggie Island]

It’s happened at LHR too - as recently as last year. They didn’t appear to have any ‘backup’ aerdrome control facility either - I daresay that it’d be fairly impractical to have any form of replacement tower unless Airservices rolls out the remote tower concept as a backup capability.

[Biggles_in_Oz]

Would it be feasible to put some very basic equipment in the original tower ?
ie. just enough for limited ops.

[missy]

It’s happened at LHR too - as recently as last year. They didn’t appear to have any ‘backup’ aerdrome control facility either - I daresay that it’d be fairly impractical to have any form of replacement tower unless Airservices rolls out the remote tower concept as a backup capability.
Not sure that I agree, there will always be a period of disruption in any changeover period to/from a 'backup' but think link indicates that NATS has contingency facility. https://www.nats.aero/news/worlds-first-approved-remote-atc-contingency-facility-unveiled/
My understanding is that they have evolved this to use their 360° simulator, basically switch off the image projectors and run it in Low Visibility mode.
And, they are trialling AI https://www.nats.aero/news/nats-trialling-use-artificial-intelligence-heathrow-airport-cut-delays/

[bmcosier]

I thought all the SYD TWR transmitters were in the Blue Mountains?

Sydney aerodrome control frequencies are all transmitted from the control tower itself (except ATIS which comes from the Airservices radio tower at Woronora).

135.1 is transmitted from the Airservices tower at Kings Tableland (Wentworth Falls, Blue Mountains) as are a number of other area and Centre frequencies. Hence the need for a relay if using 135.1 for TWR/GND/DEL, but anything in the air should be OK.

[bmcosier]

Just an update after listening to the recordings...

Sydney Aerodrome became a CTAF during the evacuation. Sydney Director (presumably controlled from the TMA control building) would vector aircraft onto final approach and then control services would terminate once established on final. They would use 120.5 as CTAF and call Director once on the ground to cancel SAR.

I'm actually shocked they don't have a better disaster recovery (DR) setup. A mission-critical service such as this usually does.

Another transport organisation in Sydney (who I cannot name) has fantastic backups - radio backups to keep crucial areas live in case the Telstra links go down, and then a DR site so if the main control room is evacuated they can remotely switch to the DR site and be operational (using other staff already on site for other duties) within minutes (then the main staff can travel about 20 minutes to the DR site if the evac/outage will last). Loss of radio comms generally won't jeapordise passenger safety for these guys, but with aircraft, ATC provides positive separation and traffic information, so it's absolutely critical. Yes, I hear you say there is TCAS, but that is really a last resort.

It seems all the non-aerodrome transmitters (eg. Approach, Director, Departures, Centre, etc) are duplicated at secondary sites, but not the aerodrome control positions. Hence the requirement for CTAF when the Tower was unavailable, with very limited traffic (as well as inbound only). It would be expensive and potentially complex to duplicate the required aerodrome functions (radar, ADS-B, comms, etc) and still there would be limited or no visual (which is important when controlling TWR and GND), depending on the chosen site. Would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the incident reviews...

[markis10]

Just an update after listening to the recordings...

Sydney Aerodrome became a CTAF during the evacuation. Sydney Director (presumably controlled from the TMA control building) would vector aircraft onto final approach and then control services would terminate once established on final. They would use 120.5 as CTAF and call Director once on the ground to cancel SAR.

I'm actually shocked they don't have a better disaster recovery (DR) setup. A mission-critical service such as this usually does.

Another transport organisation in Sydney (who I cannot name) has fantastic backups - radio backups to keep crucial areas live in case the Telstra links go down, and then a DR site so if the main control room is evacuated they can remotely switch to the DR site and be operational (using other staff already on site for other duties) within minutes (then the main staff can travel about 20 minutes to the DR site if the evac/outage will last). Loss of radio comms generally won't jeapordise passenger safety for these guys, but with aircraft, ATC provides positive separation and traffic information, so it's absolutely critical. Yes, I hear you say there is TCAS, but that is really a last resort.

It seems all the non-aerodrome transmitters (eg. Approach, Director, Departures, Centre, etc) are duplicated at secondary sites, but not the aerodrome control positions. Hence the requirement for CTAF when the Tower was unavailable, with very limited traffic (as well as inbound only). It would be expensive and potentially complex to duplicate the required aerodrome functions (radar, ADS-B, comms, etc) and still there would be limited or no visual (which is important when controlling TWR and GND), depending on the chosen site. Would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the incident reviews...

Radio frequency backups for the terminal area were not the problem, running up to the old tower with a $500 handheld could have easily solved that problem, now how do you propose you solve the inter unit comms re aircraft handoff, TSR, stop bars, as well as ground movement info? Replicating that would cost a huge amount of money and rarely be needed. FWIW app, dep and directors are based on the old tower roof and are not duplicated elsewhere for redundancy but for coverage.

[bmcosier]

That's what I meant when I said it could be expensive and potentially complex to implement but in reality the Airlines (and pax) combined financial losses from the outage last week would have been more than what it would cost to do a DR site. Everything is run over IP these days.

[markis10]

Everything is run over IP these days.

LOL, not in the world of ATC or Aerodrome ops! Aldis lamp via IP anyone?
IP based systems are not anymore reliable, just look at Aerodata and any of the recent GDS outages and the effect they have had on ops. DR is already in place with ATC, but it only goes so far, anything more just does not make financial sense.