Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center, Air traffic control center in Aurora, Illinois, US.
The Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center is an air traffic management facility in Aurora, Illinois, responsible for overseeing flights across a large portion of the Midwest. It uses radar and radio systems that operate without interruption to coordinate aircraft moving through the region.
The facility was built as air traffic over the Midwest grew through the 20th century, making a central coordination point necessary. In 2014, an arson attack temporarily shut it down and caused thousands of flight cancellations across the country.
The center takes its name from Chicago even though it sits in Aurora, a city about 40 miles (65 km) west of downtown. This mismatch surprises many people who try to locate the facility on a map for the first time.
The center is a high-security facility and is not open to the general public. Those interested in air traffic control can look for publicly accessible facilities or aviation museums in the region instead.
The center manages airspace over several states at once, which puts it among the busiest control facilities in the country. The 2014 arson attack revealed just how much of the national air traffic network depends on this single location.
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