Sam Passialis, Joe Thue, Tony Mack

Northeast Area – September 2019

On the evening of September 1, 2019, Technical Operations was performing scheduled work in the NE Area. One of their tasks was to work on the Pullman sector VSCS while it was not in use. They mistakenly disconnected the KUBBS sector VSCS instead which was an active sector.

Sam Passialis was working at the KUBBS radar position when his VSCS was disconnected and quickly realized that all of his frequencies and land lines were out. Sam immediately notified Tony Mack, the Northeast Area Operations Supervisor. Joe Thue had just been relieved from another position and headed out for a well-deserved break when this happened, instead of leaving he promptly opened the SPARTA sector to assume the airspace and frequencies that Sam had lost while Tony and Sam attempted to find a solution for the lost frequencies.

Joe tried to contact Sam’s aircraft, but few were answering. Joe asked aircraft to IDENT in case some pilots could receive our transmissions but we could not receive theirs. After no IDENTs were observed, Joe coordinated with Chicago Approach Control (C90) that they had lost their frequencies and that they were working on fixing the problem.

As two ORD arrival aircraft were entering C90’s airspace, Joe tried them on the emergency guard frequency. Thankfully one crew was monitoring guard and accepted the frequency change to Chicago Approach, but no other aircraft were responding to guard calls.

During this time, Sam and Tony had created a plan to open the FREMONT sector to control the airspace that was previously at KUBBS. Sam called Joe and coordinated that Sam would take KUBBS and FREMONT while Joe would continue working the low altitude sectors. There was still some confusion while determining which frequencies some aircraft were on, but Sam, Joe and Tony worked together to figure it out and get everyone to the correct frequencies.

Their teamwork, calm professionalism, and the years of knowledge and experience between Sam, Joe, and Tony helped regain control of the Northeast Area’s frequencies and airspace as quickly as possible during this challenging circumstance.