DENVER — More than a month after Denver7 Investigates first reported that up to 20 pilots en route to Denver International Airport were unable to speak to air traffic controllers, the Federal Aviation Administration released the cause of the outage.
On May 12, between 15 and 20 pilots were unable to speak with air traffic controllers for a period of five to six minutes, according to informed sources, due to multiple outages at the Denver Air Traffic Control Center in Longmont. The details uncovered by Denver7 Investigates received national attention, and the story was picked up by multiple news outlets.
- Watch our initial report below
The Denver Air Traffic Control Center, in part, ensures that planes have adequate spacing up in the sky as they approach their final destination. It is one of 22 such centers across the country and covers parts of Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.
All 15 to 20 planes were bound for the Denver International Airport.
The day after the incident, the Federal Aviation Administration admitted the outage, but said that it only lasted roughly 90 seconds, and that no passengers were in immediate danger because of redundancies and safety protocols in place. Late Tuesday, the FAA sent a new statement to Denver7 Investigates, attributing the issues to radio transmitters and reiterating that the outage only lasted 90 seconds.
"Overlapping outages to radio transmitters and circuits caused the 90-second communications interruption at the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center on May 12. The FAA replaced the radio transmitters and repaired the circuits," the statement read.
US Senator John Hickenlooper spoke to Denver7 Investigates after the incident and said he, too, was trying to get answers from the FAA on what caused the outage and get clarification on how long communication was down. Since then, he said he’s received some answers and a commitment from the Trump administration's nominee for FAA administrator.
“The FAA has recognized that the response was perhaps not perfect,” Hickenlooper said. “The best information that we got is that they are, sadly, underfunded for a long time. Some of the infrastructure is decrepit and long past its expected life.”
Denver7 Investigates
Denver7 Investigates: Hickenlooper calls air traffic control outage unacceptable
Bryan Bedford, the nominee for FAA administrator, also addressed the outage during a June 11 Senate hearing and took questions from Hickenlooper. Bedford noted that there are enough failsafes in place that travelers are still safe, but that he will prioritize funding to fix these issues.
“We need to ensure the public that travel is safe. It is safe. There are multiple layers of redundancy in the system, but we don't want to get to the second, third and fourth layer of redundancy,” Bedford said during the hearing. “So the system is old, it's tired. It needs to be replaced.”
Hickenlooper also credited Denver7 Investigates’ reporting in making the public aware of these issues.
“I think the bottom line is these things have to get better,” Hickenlooper said. “And when you shine a bright light, when the media — reporters such as yourself — when you guys uncover things and shine a bright light, it forces the government to respond.”
