Narrative:

While an aircraft X was joining the SID and climbing to 080; a hand off was initiated to ZFW32. I cannot remember if I started the hand off or if ARTS auto-initiated the hand off. On my radar; the hand off showed completed to ZFW32 and when the aircraft was clear of any possible traffic; I switched him to ZFW. A minute or so later; ZFW32 called me to inquire about the location of aircraft X; since they did not have a hand off on the aircraft. I told them that I was showing that they had the hand off and after some discussion; we realized that the hand off that they had accepted was showing as being on a completely different flight plan and call sign on their radar. They said that their hand off data block showed another aircraft. All of this was accomplished while the aircraft was still in my airspace by at least 10-15 miles; so there was no deviation of any type. I reported what happened to the supervisor. He related to me what he had been told by support personnel. Apparently; around the time of making the hand off to ZFW; our west ASR-9 radar had some type of momentary failure and was 'microwaving'. They told the supervisor that could have made the data blocks 'jump' or something like that. This should not have affected me anyway; since I was using the azle ASR-9 radar and not the west radar. He told them to investigate to determine whether or not that was the actual cause of what happened. There are multiple issues that are very unsafe here. First; if a 'hiccup' by one of our radar sites can cause any hand offs to contain incorrect information; then that is a definite safety issue. Nobody in the control room was told of any potential issues that could happen with handoffs. Second; there was some kind of breakdown in the information verification protocol that should have happened between ARTS and host during the hand off procedure so that automated hand offs can be trusted to be correct. The whole purpose of automated hand offs is that the information between both facilities matches so that manual hand offs don't have to be made. Somehow in this situation; host and ARTS did not communicate to ensure that our hand off/flight plan information matched. At centers; if something doesn't pass correctly; they get a 'failure' message at the uret position to indicate that a manual hand off might be needed. In our ARTS facility; if the data block doesn't flash 'dm'; 'if'; or a number of other indicators; then we have no way of knowing that the hand off is having a problem. None of these things happened at my position. It looked like a normal hand off had happened with no indication of any type of problem. Recommendation; investigate why automated hand offs to ZFW are having issues in order to determine how to fix the problems.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: D10 Controller reported a failed ARTS to Host hand off event with data swaps involved; suggesting further investigation must be completed to determine the cause of this anomaly.

Narrative: While an Aircraft X was joining the SID and climbing to 080; a hand off was initiated to ZFW32. I cannot remember if I started the hand off or if ARTS auto-initiated the hand off. On my RADAR; the hand off showed completed to ZFW32 and when the aircraft was clear of any possible traffic; I switched him to ZFW. A minute or so later; ZFW32 called me to inquire about the location of Aircraft X; since they did not have a hand off on the aircraft. I told them that I was showing that they had the hand off and after some discussion; we realized that the hand off that they had accepted was showing as being on a completely different flight plan and call sign on their RADAR. They said that their hand off data block showed another aircraft. All of this was accomplished while the aircraft was still in my airspace by at least 10-15 miles; so there was no deviation of any type. I reported what happened to the Supervisor. He related to me what he had been told by support personnel. Apparently; around the time of making the hand off to ZFW; our West ASR-9 RADAR had some type of momentary failure and was 'microwaving'. They told the Supervisor that could have made the data blocks 'jump' or something like that. This should not have affected me anyway; since I was using the AZLE ASR-9 RADAR and not the West RADAR. He told them to investigate to determine whether or not that was the ACTUAL cause of what happened. There are multiple issues that are very unsafe here. First; if a 'hiccup' by one of our RADAR sites can cause any hand offs to contain incorrect information; then that is a definite safety issue. Nobody in the control room was told of any potential issues that could happen with handoffs. Second; there was some kind of breakdown in the information verification protocol that should have happened between ARTS and HOST during the hand off procedure so that automated hand offs can be trusted to be correct. The whole purpose of automated hand offs is that the information between both facilities matches so that manual hand offs don't have to be made. Somehow in this situation; HOST and ARTS did not communicate to ensure that our hand off/flight plan information matched. At Centers; if something doesn't pass correctly; they get a 'failure' message at the URET position to indicate that a manual hand off might be needed. In our ARTS facility; if the data block doesn't flash 'DM'; 'IF'; or a number of other indicators; then we have no way of knowing that the hand off is having a problem. None of these things happened at my position. It looked like a normal hand off had happened with no indication of any type of problem. Recommendation; investigate why automated hand offs to ZFW are having issues in order to determine how to fix the problems.

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.