Narrative:

Everybody up the line from me failed to do their jobs and created an unsafe environment for ord traffic. Out of the 4 arrival sectors into C90; I was the only sector with weather on my approach. I made my supervisor aware that the small holes in the weather I was depicting were quickly closing; and inquired as to why I still had a long stream of ord traffic coming towards my sector. I commented that the traffic should be rerouted to another arrival sector; any other arrival sector; as none of them had weather as I did. The supervisor did absolutely nothing. My d-side and I did the best we could to coordinate with C90; as the pilots were deviating further and further off of the arrival; getting close to departure sectors. In one instance; we coordinated two aircraft deviating east through a departure sector; and the coordination was successful with C90; as they had no departing traffic at the time. While I was coordinating with C90; my d-side; and the pilots; the supervisor was in my ear telling me how to run my traffic; and had apparently decided that I had been correct all along and we should give the pilots last minute reroutes to another sector. I advised him that coordination had already been done with C90 for those two airplanes; and transferred communication to C90. Moments later; C90 called and put us in the hold until 'we could figure out the best plan of action for our aircraft.' it became quickly apparent that there was no plan. The tmu did nothing to reroute this traffic; and neither did the supervisor despite my concerns that things were going to go south very quickly. At that time; I had several ord arrivals in my sector; all deviating around weather so I had to re-clear all the aircraft back to the arrival to hold. An A320 at the time was approximately 6 miles ahead of a phenom 100; both aircraft going to the same fix to hold. The phenom was level at 160; I believe. The A320; ahead of the phenom; same direction was leaving 170 for 120. Conflict alert was activated and at that time and I realized that the A320 had significantly reduced his speed in anticipation of entering the holding pattern; so the phenom was closing the gap between them. I told the A320 to expedite through 150 and report leaving 150; which he did; but there may have been one hit inside the bubble; if at all. To be quite honest; I was far too busy to be overly concerned about 4.95 mile separation instead of 5 mile separation; especially since; while working all the traffic that should have not been inside my airspace in the first place; getting slammed in the hold. Vectoring and amending altitudes of every single airplane to try to get them back to the arrival holding fix; having my supervisor give me contradictory instructions to what had already been coordinated; I also had a formation flight breakup in my airspace. Recommendation; I understand it is a weekend day; and people may be in an end of the week 'lull' but we have jobs to do. The tmu should have been the first line of defense and had the foresight to reroute these airplanes further out so that they were not being vectored around the only weather in the arrival sectors and flying through departure sectors; they failed. The second line of defense should have been my supervisor when I told him plain and simple that sending the airplanes through my airspace was not the best of ideas. It became apparent that nobody cared. I'm not sure exactly what I can recommend to rectify this type of event. You can't teach common sense.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ZAU Controller experienced a loss of separation event when handling heavy ORD arrival traffic was complicated due to weather deviations; the reporter claiming the Supervisor and TMU failed in their responsibilities.

Narrative: Everybody up the line from me failed to do their jobs and created an unsafe environment for ORD traffic. Out of the 4 arrival sectors into C90; I was the only sector with weather on my approach. I made my Supervisor aware that the small holes in the weather I was depicting were quickly closing; and inquired as to why I still had a long stream of ORD traffic coming towards my sector. I commented that the traffic should be rerouted to another arrival sector; any other arrival sector; as none of them had weather as I did. The Supervisor did absolutely nothing. My D-Side and I did the best we could to coordinate with C90; as the pilots were deviating further and further off of the arrival; getting close to departure sectors. In one instance; we coordinated two aircraft deviating east through a departure sector; and the coordination was successful with C90; as they had no departing traffic at the time. While I was coordinating with C90; my D-Side; and the pilots; the Supervisor was in my ear telling me how to run my traffic; and had apparently decided that I had been correct all along and we should give the pilots last minute reroutes to another sector. I advised him that coordination had already been done with C90 for those two airplanes; and transferred communication to C90. Moments later; C90 called and put us in the hold until 'we could figure out the best plan of action for our aircraft.' It became quickly apparent that there was no plan. The TMU did nothing to reroute this traffic; and neither did the supervisor despite my concerns that things were going to go south very quickly. At that time; I had several ORD arrivals in my sector; all deviating around weather so I had to re-clear all the aircraft back to the arrival to hold. An A320 at the time was approximately 6 miles ahead of a Phenom 100; both aircraft going to the same fix to hold. The Phenom was level at 160; I believe. The A320; ahead of the Phenom; same direction was leaving 170 for 120. Conflict Alert was activated and at that time and I realized that the A320 had significantly reduced his speed in anticipation of entering the holding pattern; so the Phenom was closing the gap between them. I told the A320 to expedite through 150 and report leaving 150; which he did; but there may have been one hit inside the bubble; if at all. To be quite honest; I was far too busy to be overly concerned about 4.95 mile separation instead of 5 mile separation; especially since; while working all the traffic that should have not been inside my airspace in the first place; getting slammed in the hold. Vectoring and amending altitudes of every single airplane to try to get them back to the arrival holding fix; having my Supervisor give me contradictory instructions to what had already been coordinated; I also had a formation flight breakup in my airspace. Recommendation; I understand it is a weekend day; and people may be in an end of the week 'lull' but we have jobs to do. The TMU should have been the first line of defense and had the foresight to reroute these airplanes further out so that they were not being vectored around the only weather in the arrival sectors and flying through departure sectors; they failed. The second line of defense should have been my Supervisor when I told him plain and simple that sending the airplanes through my airspace was not the best of ideas. It became apparent that nobody cared. I'm not sure exactly what I can recommend to rectify this type of event. You can't teach common sense.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.