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[–] 3 points 2 hours ago

The agency wrote on Nov. 10 that after the D.C. test, it will “now use SMART in the airspace of all 22 centers across the country

ATC has 3 facility types: Tower, approach, and center

Center is for the largest/busiest airspaces. They operate from effectively a bunker in the middle of nowhere, using only instrumentation to track and direct traffic

Centers were the only ones unable to perform traffic separation duties, which is fairly telling

My tower was still operating fine. The center near me was not. They said they have no radar, making IFR traffic separation effectively impossible for them too control

I don't know if it was this SMART tool or not, but if it was, it'd look just like this

Also of note, the FAA gave controllers very little information about this ground stop. All they gave was an initial downtime estimate of ~7 hours

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