FAA Radar Center In Aurora Fully Operational More Than Two Weeks After Fire

(CBS) -- The FAA radar center in Aurora is fully back up and running after a fire more than two weeks ago damaged the facility, sending air travel across the country into a tail-spin. A contract worker is accused of setting that fire.

Crews did some final checks on the newly rebuilt system and everything looked good at 1 a.m. so for the first time in more than two weeks, one of the busiest air traffic control centers in the country was once again allowed to open for business.

It was late last month when federal prosecutors say Brian Howard of Naperville deliberately set fire to the aurora facility's computerized control system before trying to kill himself. He survived, but the fire he set Took out a facility controlling more than 90,000 square miles of airspace in seven states.

The fire forced FAA technicians to replace more than 20 racks of computers, 800 telecommunication circuits and 10 miles of cable.

Despite working around-the-clock, in the first week alone, more than 5000 flights were canceled at O'Hare and Midway as technicians worked to install the new equipment.

Ultimately flights were canceled at airports around the country, costing the industry hundreds of millions of dollars.

During the shutdown, More than 200 had been forced to work at the other facilities.

CBS 2's Rosanne Tellez talked with business travelers at O'Hare Monday who are still wary.

"I'm disappointed it took this long. I thought it would have been done a lot quicker," said Jeff Mensah.

The trade group Airlines for America said these kinds of disruptions "are not acceptable" and said they "expect FAA to address those shortfalls caused by this prolonged outage..."

FAA officials were not available for comment today, but speaking for controllers, Hauck said they made the best of a horrible situation.

"This is something that nobody anticipated and we put it back together as a team," Toby Hauck National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

An FAA technical team plans to stick around for the next week, making sure things continue running smoothly.