Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 25.0
Troubleshooting; Workload; Communication Breakdown; Human-Machine Interface; Situational Awareness
ATC Issue All Types; Conflict Airborne Conflict; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings; Airspace Structure; Procedure
The first problem was that the radar and frequencies were going out of service due to satellite alignment issues for about 10 minutes. The next problem was we have all of this [high volume of traffic] going on and sector 62 gets overwhelmed almost no matter how much flow they put out. I was at the Sector 63 Handoff position. Realizing that the radar was going out I coordinated all of the flights I had going into sector 62. They had strips on the aircraft coming from me because we have strips on aircraft going into/out of the Domincan Republic. But we no longer post strips on aircraft going into/out of San Juan center's airspace because of the volume of strips. I did not think about this at the time. The strips would normally be printed out for a full blown radar outage but because this is only 10 minutes we try to pretend it isn't as big a deal.Additionally; we also violated our Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) by leaving sector 63 split off from sector 62 instead of combining it; which we would also normally do. I guess the controller at Sector 58 did not think to pass estimates to Sector 62 about their aircraft. So; the Sector 62 controller (who was totally overwhelmed with the volume and complexity of what was going on) could not check for non-radar traffic at the crossing fix. We at Sector 63 gave sector 62 two different flights. It occurred to the Sector 63 controller to look and see if there was any crossing traffic. He looked and saw there was a flight at 37000 feet getting together with one of our flights. He warned the Sector 62 controller. By the time we had lost the radar and frequencies. The great thing about this satellite issue is that the sight of our frequency backups also goes down. After a lot of scrambling and thinking; somebody got a relay to the flight to descend and the flight to turn. We never lost separation but it was scary. These satellite issues also occurred on other days.The FAA has to stop pretending that working airplanes in the Ocean area is just like working airplanes in domestic airspace. If there is going to be some sort of massive outage in domestic airspace planes get flowed; planes get rerouted; things happen. Well; there is no place else to really route airplanes in the ocean. We have very little in the way of back up equipment. Massive flow needs to be put in ahead of time; not when it is already too late. Tech Ops needs to be held responsible when they forget to tell us such critical information. Management needs to be held responsible when they do too little (or absolutely nothing) about it. Bad things can happen. And we keep muddling our way through every time and get lucky enough not to make the news. A written plan needs to be developed and followed to the letter every time when these things are going to occur.
A Center Oceanic Controller reported proper procedures and equipment requirements were not implemented during a planned radar and radio outage period.