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Can an “Accidental” Large System Intervention be successful?


The date was 11th September 2001. I am sure you would have guessed what this article is going to talk to about. But you are partially correct...

It was normal morning in Gander, a small Canadian town on an island in the North Atlantic Ocean. People walked into the air traffic controller office by 8am as usual. Everything was going smoothly. Suddenly, news surfaced on the television by 8:50am that an American Airlines flight 11crashed into the Northern facade of the World Trade Centre, New York City. Initially, everyone had a perception that it might have been a small plane until they witnessed another plane crashing into the southern facade of World Trade Centre at 9:03am. There were worried faces in the office. More damage was on the cards. At 9:37am, another plane crashed into the western facade of Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia. At 9:42am, the Federal Aviation Administration decided to close the United States airspace to avoid further damage.

A gentleman named Harold O'Reilly was the Shift Manager on that day. Everything had to move on a war-footing basis.  Harold had to communicate his team that they have to get in touch with all the planes and tell them to land all the planes at seven different locations – Gander, St. John’s, Halifax, Stephenville, Deer Lake, Moncton, Goose Bay. A small air traffic control team in Gander had to land all the planes immediately that were heading towards the American air space. All the flights from the Northern Ocean were converging over Newfoundland. There were 224 international flights with 33,000 passengers heading their way towards Gander. The team had no idea as to how many flights could be accommodated at Gander airport. The main goal of this operation was to get these flights out of the sky and land them safely. This meant that there had to be appropriate utilization of the space and even pavements. One flight would land every five minutes across seven airports. Few pilots had difficulties but there was a clear instruction that no flight turns back and all of them had to be grounded. The entire onus of the decision was given to the Gander Air Traffic control team. Constant coordination with tower helped the air traffic controller to get more planes to Gander. By 11:45am, 120 planes had landed and 104 were in skies. One of the planes even had to jettison 7000 pounds of fuel in skies to ensure a safe landing. Perfect coordination between the pilot and controller sealed the deal. In totality, 38 planes landed at the Gander airport and 6500 passengers were stranded.

The event was full of complexity, any delay in the coordination would have asked for more trouble, effectiveness in execution was at its epitome and a blend of all the possible definitions of an intervention. Each and every member at the Gander airport was involved and displayed a commitment to the core. This large system intervention was able to gain faith in people and make huge enhancements in execution through changes by which they structured themselves and relate to the environment. Careful observation on this entire incident would tell us that it clearly represents a large system intervention that Gander Air Traffic Control Team had pulled it off successfully. 



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