Narrative:

I was conducting OJT on a radar sector with a developmental that has 2 other certifications. The far north corner of our airspace has a 15 mile wide area where our sector owns to the ground with approach controls owning each side of that area. In this situation cmh ATCT gives us an aircraft at 9000 ft and we work him through the 15 mile wide area and descend him to 7000 per LOA with the next ATC; which is cak ATCT. This action was complicated by a VFR aircraft under VFR advisories with us through the same sliver of airspace. The VFR aircraft was at 7300 and we started our IFR aircraft X from 9000ft to 8000ft. Once aircraft X was just out running the VFR aircraft we started aircraft X to 7000 ft and initiated an automated hand off to cak ATCT. The hand off then failed; this took a few seconds to notice; and then we took the hand off flash back and waited a few seconds and retried. This did not work; we tried a few 'tricks' to get the hand off complete. It did not work and we asked the d-side to try and manually hand off the aircraft. This did not work either. We discussed what to do and tried shouting on the akr land line and after 5 or 6 attempts at contacting cak ATCT we still did not have the aircraft handed off prior to the ZID - cak ATCT boundary. Eventually the d-side made contact with cak ATCT and they said radar contact. Not sure why it took so long for them to pick up the line or why the aircraft failed to hand off to start with. The aircraft was in such a position that he was heading into a U shaped area where he could only have made a very tight u-turn and reversed course to avoid entering the adjacent airspace. Recommendation; get us information at the sector sooner that an aircraft is not going to be auto 'hand off -able' to the next facility. Even 30 seconds to 1 minute early heads up would make it safer. That small area should be one facility to another; not a ATCT1 - ARTCC - ATCT2 in 15 miles. This is made worse by the fact that one of the ATCT underlies an adjacent ARTCC so the data transfer is even worse. I do not know if there was some kind of communications issue with cak ATCT or if he was busy with other higher priority activities while we were trying to contact him.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ZID controller described airspace incursion event when the hand off functionality failed and verbal communication was not completed in time; reporter suggesting improved failed hand off notification/s and airspace realignments.

Narrative: I was conducting OJT on a RADAR sector with a developmental that has 2 other certifications. The far north corner of our airspace has a 15 mile wide area where our sector owns to the ground with approach controls owning each side of that area. In this situation CMH ATCT gives us an aircraft at 9000 ft and we work him through the 15 mile wide area and descend him to 7000 per LOA with the next ATC; which is CAK ATCT. This action was complicated by a VFR aircraft under VFR advisories with us through the same sliver of airspace. The VFR aircraft was at 7300 and we started our IFR Aircraft X from 9000ft to 8000ft. Once Aircraft X was just out running the VFR aircraft we started Aircraft X to 7000 ft and initiated an automated hand off to CAK ATCT. The hand off then failed; this took a few seconds to notice; and then we took the hand off flash back and waited a few seconds and retried. This did not work; we tried a few 'tricks' to get the hand off complete. It did not work and we asked the D-side to try and manually hand off the aircraft. This did not work either. We discussed what to do and tried shouting on the AKR land line and after 5 or 6 attempts at contacting CAK ATCT we still did not have the aircraft handed off prior to the ZID - CAK ATCT boundary. Eventually the D-side made contact with CAK ATCT and they said RADAR contact. Not sure why it took so long for them to pick up the line or why the aircraft failed to hand off to start with. The aircraft was in such a position that he was heading into a U shaped area where he could only have made a very tight U-turn and reversed course to avoid entering the adjacent airspace. Recommendation; get us information at the sector sooner that an aircraft is not going to be auto 'hand off -able' to the next facility. Even 30 seconds to 1 minute early heads up would make it safer. That small area should be one facility to another; not a ATCT1 - ARTCC - ATCT2 in 15 miles. This is made worse by the fact that one of the ATCT underlies an adjacent ARTCC so the data transfer is even worse. I do not know if there was some kind of communications issue with CAK ATCT or if he was busy with other higher priority activities while we were trying to contact him.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 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.