Narrative:

We experienced an unexpected snow event that resulted in numerous equipment failures and an unprepared airport staff. There was not near enough snow equipment to accommodate the volume of traffic requiring de-icing. Part of the equipment failure was the loss of a number of the ILS systems; resulting in loads of in flight holding and thus backing up the departure rush into the late hours of the mid-shift. Two controllers were held over for overtime. At that time we had 7 bays of strips at ground control and 2 bays of strips at clearance delivery; with an additional ½ inch of strips in the printer. This equated to about 150+ strips; not of which would go; but it was still way to much for one person to handle. The other late shift person was working local controls for the entire tower. A large part of the problem was the supervisor; or tmc; had put the center into 4 hour parameters for flight plans; prior to our getting there. Eventually the volume of aircraft waiting to depart and waiting for clearances got to the point that it was unmanageable for one person; so I was forced to regulate which position to work in order to handle the volume. In addition; there was an issue with the flight plans timing out from the fdio; but not erasing the data from the asde-X. At that point the squawk code was being assigned to another flight plan and thus several aircraft got airborne without a flight plan; but had the squawk assigned to another departure; resulting in the ARTS misidentifying the aircraft. Overall; it was a poor operation which resulted in an inefficient operation that could have resulted in some safety issues. Recommendation: the asde-X needs to be integrated with the fdio/host computer in order to delete the alpha-numerics of aircraft that have been deleted from the host computer. I would recommend that when in charge of a shift; the supervisor should evaluate the operation in order to determine the appropriate number of controllers required to accomplish the goal of managing the volume of air traffic.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Tower Controller described an extremely busy/complex late night traffic period caused by an unexpected snow storm; listing unprepared airport staff/facilities; automation constraints; and supervisory/TMC decisions as causal factors.

Narrative: We experienced an unexpected snow event that resulted in numerous equipment failures and an unprepared airport staff. There was not near enough snow equipment to accommodate the volume of traffic requiring de-icing. Part of the equipment failure was the loss of a number of the ILS systems; resulting in loads of in flight holding and thus backing up the departure rush into the late hours of the mid-shift. Two controllers were held over for overtime. At that time we had 7 bays of strips at Ground Control and 2 bays of strips at Clearance Delivery; with an additional ½ inch of strips in the printer. This equated to about 150+ strips; not of which would go; but it was still way to much for one person to handle. The other late shift person was working Local Controls for the entire Tower. A large part of the problem was the Supervisor; or TMC; had put the Center into 4 hour parameters for flight plans; prior to our getting there. Eventually the volume of aircraft waiting to depart and waiting for clearances got to the point that it was unmanageable for one person; so I was forced to regulate which position to work in order to handle the volume. In addition; there was an issue with the flight plans timing out from the FDIO; but not erasing the data from the ASDE-X. At that point the squawk code was being assigned to another flight plan and thus several aircraft got airborne without a flight plan; but had the squawk assigned to another departure; resulting in the ARTS misidentifying the aircraft. Overall; it was a poor operation which resulted in an inefficient operation that could have resulted in some safety issues. Recommendation: The ASDE-X needs to be integrated with the FDIO/host computer in order to delete the alpha-numerics of aircraft that have been deleted from the host computer. I would recommend that when in charge of a shift; the Supervisor should evaluate the operation in order to determine the appropriate number of controllers required to accomplish the goal of managing the volume of air traffic.

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.