Any Unknown or Unlisted Aircraft Manufacturer
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 8
Workload; Situational Awareness; Distraction
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Air Traffic Control Separated Traffic; Air Traffic Control Provided Assistance
Procedure; ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings; Human Factors; Company Policy
Arrived to work this morning to one of the most unsafe environments I have ever seen in my many years of air traffic. Our ASDE-X (Airport Service Detection Equipment) was out of service. Which is a major equipment outage for us. There is no redundancy for runway incursions. Management decided that there was no need to change the traffic flow or try to limit our arrival rate with this major outage. Not only that; we were short staffed. I worked part of this session combined up with Clearance Delivery. This was very stressful as the frequency congestion was immense. I was trying to write down the arrivals but there was no way I could keep up. I lost track of aircraft several times and put pressure on the local controllers to try and keep track of my departure sequence. There is no way I could scan for runway incursions or really be of any help. This was a dangerous situation. If it is repeated; it will put this facility at risk of a dangerous and possibly catastrophic event. There were delays for inbound and outbound traffic. But more importantly; the safety redundancy that should exist at a major airport was gone. This staffing shortage for this day shift was known for a while; and yet nothing was done about it. The 'We will get by' attitude has struck again at SLC Tower. Only this time there was an unplanned outage which put a major risk on the system. From my perspective; there was nothing done to improve the situation when the equipment outage was known. This is gross negligence. It is leaving the controllers to fend for themselves in a very dangerous situation.We need management that cares about safety first and foremost. To leave the work force in those conditions is outrageous. The facility should come up with a plan for ASDE-X outages; there is no contingency plan; it's just; fly by the seat of your pants. It was dangerous to fly into and out of Salt Lake airport today.
SLC Tower Controller reported that in addition to the ASDE-X being out of service; controllers were short staffed and overwhelmed causing an increasingly unsafe environment.