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In northern California this summer, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) unintentionally performed it's first operational test of "free flight"; aviation without direct air traffic control. This was an unintentional experiment because it was a result of a to ....

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.... the sudden quiet in the control suite as "the loudest silence I've ever heard" (UPI , 1995). He went on to say there was "panic on everybody's face" as they realized they had been rendered deaf, dumb, and blind by this catastrophic equipment failure. It took a few minutes for controllers to realize the shut-down had affected the entire facility. There was no book procedure to cover this emergency scenario, so most controllers improvised. Controllers in adjourning Los Angeles, Salt Lake, and Seattle ARTCCs and various Terminal Radar Approach Controls (TRACON; the level of radar coverage below upper-level ARTCC radar) were asked to take control over al ....