FAA closes Jacksonville Control Center for the second time in ten days

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. The federal air traffic center in Hilliard, which controls airspace throughout North Florida and South Georgia, closed again on Wednesday afternoon – the second time the center has closed this year.

The closure – from 16: 20-18: 30 – lasts after another employee tested positive for COVID-19. During that time, aircraft were flown around the airspace or handled by underlying facilities. The facility will be thoroughly cleaned before reopening.

All flights traveling north from as far south as Miami will travel in one file line along the Atlantic coastline and they will remain at the same altitude until they reach Atlanta’s airspace. All flights south will do the same, but along the Gulf Coast

Flights that have to travel across places like Texas and Louisiana across the Gulf Coast to Florida will have to fly at much lower altitudes, which means you have to burn more fuel, which is why some airlines may prefer to just cancel the flights.

From 5:10 p.m., several flights to and from Jacksonville International Airport were delayed from a few minutes to three hours.

Wednesday’s closing was announced in a tweet from JAX.

The FAA said before today that staff working at the facility tested positive on 22, 25, 26, 8 July, 9, 21, 22, 19, 28 November, 17 December and 3 January.

When it happened last week, News4Jax aviation expert Ed Booth called the closure ‘totally unprecedented’.

“It’s been open for 80 years now,” Booth said. “And as far as I can tell, and I’ve been flying around here for 43 years, it’s not closed in those 80 years. It is therefore a historical event. ”

An FAA spokesman said the Hilliard plant covers pan-handle flights to Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa. It also covers flights in Southeast Georgia and South Carolina.

According to George Winterling, a retired meteorologist from the News4Jax Weather Authority, the air traffic center first opened at Imeson Field in December 1941 – also known as Jacksonville Imeson Airport. In February 1961, the air traffic center moved to Hilliard. Winterling worked with the U.S. Weather Service in the Imeson terminal for five years before joining WJXT in 1962.