o'hare closed?
 

early reports of Chicago O'Hare and midway airports closed due to a fire?

Anyone have any more info?

News Report
 

Next best thing: on FlightRadar24 you could see things like this:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...lightradar.png

Reports now say that a contract worker was upset because he was being transferred to Hawaii.

Brian Howard of Naperville charged with starting fire at FAA facility in Aurora, FBI says | abc7chicago.com

Excerpts:

"Brian Howard, 36, of Naperville has been charged with one count of Destruction of Aircraft or Aircraft Facilities after he allegedly set a fire in the basement of an Aurora FAA facility, cut the feeds to the radar and damaged the communications system..."

"(The suspect) had intimate knowledge of the building and radar system. He cut every radar feed to FAA air controllers before setting gas-soaked rags on fire near sensitive equipment..."

"Officials said water used to put the fire out damaged the sensitive equipment further, and there could be days of potential radar outages at the Aurora facility... "

"The suspect allegedly posted a threat to damage the FAA facility earlier on Facebook."

"Sources said the man was angry he was going to be transferred with work to Hawaii."

Chicago ATC employee set fire that grounded flights
 

So let me get this straight -
1. Winter is coming to Chicago
2. Work is going to send you to Hawaii
3. You're upset
This dude has problems.

Yeah, but he solved his personal "issue". He ain't going to Hawaii anymore. He'll love Marion, Illinois. Lovely place in January.

one thing to remember is that this was happening around six AM local time.

in two more hours there would have been much more traffic airborne in center air space to deal with...as it happened, the controllers lost primary com and went to standby com, dealt with things and then evacuated.

controllers are critical safety employees and may be asked to stay at their stations in dangerous situations.

SBN approach has been doing yeomans work keeping things moving into chicago from the east.
Getting into the flight levels from western michigan has been a little problematic though. North central Illinois is, in the words of CMI clearance yesterday, "kind of a no mans land"

Some interesting details:

"The first radio links with pilots were lost just as the pre-dawn crush of flights into Chicago began.

Air-traffic controllers in a nondescript Federal Aviation Administration building about 40 miles from the city switched to backup channels. Then those failed. They tried emergency connections, which also went dead."

More from:

Contact Lost With Planes One by One as FAA Fire Spread - Bloomberg