In the early 70s when at MIT I spent three years working a bit on the upgrade to the Air Traffic Control System. The FAA was a bit of an anachronism not having than any leading edge tech. But many suggestions were made and few were implemented. The simplest was back up to the communications system. Now in today's world there should be no issue with communications, but alas the FAA and DoT's management have demonstrated endless incompetence. I gather the regional centers cannot communicate and thus handoff is impossible.
The solution is simple. First fire the Secretary, replace him with some technically competent Gunny from the Marine Corps. Second, the Regional Centers should just connect over cell phones. Then paper maps with small chips from a poker game for each aircraft. Have a single shouter in each Regional Center should out commands and then they can talk to their incoming and out going traffic and via cell phones to each other.
These aircraft must land. The big problem is the NYC hub. Control goes from Halifax to Boston, and perhaps they can still talk, I assume the Canadians are not full up on clowns, so just start landing in Logan, Portsmouth, Manchester and Hanscom.
Just some thought.
Afterthought: I was amazed by the response by the DoT head. It was not the slightest bit informative or apologetic. It was "we need more money". It also seemed to confuse switches with routers. One wonders if anyone has a clue as to what is going on.
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