Airport handles radar blackout

Honolulu International Airport suffered a radar failure Thursday morning at a time when more than 40 planes were in the air, but backup procedures worked smoothly and the situation never became dangerous, a federal official said yesterday. Ian Gregor, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman for the Western Pacific, said radar scopes at the airport went black for nine minutes at about noon on Thursday. There were 47 planes in the air at the time, Gregor said. "The good news," Gregor said, "is that we have procedures in place to deal with these situations and our air traffic controllers, supervisors and managers are all well-trained in these procedures. They immediately responded and handled the situation by going to Plan B. "Everybody performed brilliantly." He said the situation affected all air space in the Hawaiian... [read full story]