Radar and communications outages in Dallas prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to stop flights Friday afternoon at the area’s two largest airports.
“The FAA is slowing flights into Dallas Love Field and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport due to a reported equipment issue at Dallas TRACON,” the FAA said in a statement. The FAA is investigating the cause of the outage.
The Terminal Radar Approach Control, handles flights arriving or departing the two airports.
“We’ve lost all radar and phone communications,” the controller in the Dallas Love Field Air Traffic Control tower said in audio recorded by LiveATC.net. “I’m not departing anybody until we can get a system setup. We have no coms with approach right now,”
“Approach wanted to pass on to you to stop all departures. They can’t get a hold of you. They are having some com issues, I guess,” a Southwest pilot told the Love Field tower.
“Yeah, I think the entire Metroplex just went down,” the controller responded on the radio. “We got a hold of somebody.”
As of 2 p.m. CT there were 273 flight delays at DFW, and 69 at Love Field.
The latest publicly available alert from the Federal Aviation Administration shows that Dallas flights are being delayed an average of two hours and 13 minutes, with the peak delay reaching more than seven hours.
DFW is the third-busiest airport in the world and a major hub for American Airlines. Southwest Airlines operates a hub at Love Field.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
