Mooney Aircraft Undifferentiated or Other Model
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Communication Breakdown; Workload
ATC Issue All Types
General None Reported / Taken
Human Factors; Procedure
I was working the LCE/City position combined and the only reason I had it combined was that there had been training earlier and the training team was coming back from a bank. I had a few airplanes and remember thinking I should tell the FLM that we needed to split this position. Before I could do that; Lake Sector of Salt Lake TRACON called me with a jump aircraft that was 1 minute to jump over the top of my airspace at 12;000 MSL. In hindsight I should have told them to hold the jumpers but I didn't because just minutes earlier the FLM had approached me while I was working and told me that at other TRACON's they had jumpers all the time and never sterilized airspace for them. I was under the impression that's what he/she wanted to do so I let the jumpers go with the intent of moving everyone around the jump aircraft. While this was going on; the training team had come back and was trying to get a briefing from me while I was dealing with now about 4-5 aircraft all converging on the airport. The drop zone is over the fairgrounds probably less than 3 miles east (towards the mountains) from the approach end of my runways. We finally got the position split and we trying to work our way out of the hole we had created for ourselves. The Mooney was shifted; vectored and re-sequenced many times as we tried to split the position and ultimately got on the ground and while he was taxiing off the runway he told me that he thought he had blown a tire on the runway. I wasn't immediately concerned as the blown tire would have been on Runway 35 and my next 2 arrivals were set up for Runway 32 which essentially shares a threshold. The Mooney was [on] about [a] 2 mile final when the vehicle called and asked permission to get out on the runway and inspect it for debris from the blown tire. Again; I wasn't concerned because it was Runway 35 and not Runway 32. I put the vehicle on the runway and he immediately turned south on the runway and started speeding towards the approach end. The ASDE-X alerted for traffic on Runway 35 but we were landing Runway 32. As I was scanning my final trying to locate the Mooney to ensure that he was lined up for the correct runway another CPC voiced concern about where the vehicle was in relation to the approach end. I looked again and noticed that the vehicle was very near the approach end and I also remembered that there was no hold short line on 35 to ensure that you are off of Runway 32 at least at that location. I sent the Mooney around and had him parallel Runway 35 until I could coordinate with the City Controller on what to do with him. The City Controller was still extremely busy with his own airplanes and at one point I had heard him ask the TRACON controllers to hold out all the VFR aircraft outside of City airspace which according to him they did not do. After I got the Mooney in the go around I looked again and the vehicle was headed back north away from the approach end and I let the next aircraft land on Runway 32. By the time the second aircraft crossed the threshold the vehicle was nearly off Runway 35 about 4;500 FT north of the threshold of both Runway 35 and 32. In addition to the above incident; there were several issues with getting people on the right frequency once they were on the ground and the position was split because they had been on City frequency while I was working it combined and in our haste to try and get it split we didn't get everyone switched over to Local frequency in a timely manner. Better procedures briefed locally on how to handle these jump operations. The FLM should have seen what was coming and shut the jump operation down before it even got started. This is a predictable busy time every weekday night and the FLM should be more on top of getting the position split before it is too busy to do so safely.
SLC Controller experienced a go around event when attempts to split the position along with confusion regarding parachute jump operations introduced a number of distractions leading to the event.