Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center
air Route Traffic Control Center in Aurora, Illinois, US
Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center (ZAU) (radio communications: "Chicago Center") is one of 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs) operated by the United States Federal Aviation Administration. It is located at 619 W. New Indian Trail Rd., Aurora, Illinois.
The primary responsibility of Chicago Center is sequencing and separation of over-flights, arrivals, and departures in order to provide safe, orderly, and expeditious flow of aircraft.
Chicago Center covers approximately 91,000 square miles (240,000 km2) of the Midwestern United States, including parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa.
Chicago Center lies adjacent to Minneapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center, Kansas City Air Route Traffic Control Center, Indianapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center, and Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center. ZAU overlies or abuts many approach control facilities (including Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, the Quad Cities, Peoria, Springfield, Indianapolis, and Grand Rapids approaches).
Chicago Center is the tenth busiest ARTCC in the United States. In 2024, Chicago Center handled 2,141,995 aircraft operations.
2014 fire
On September 26, 2014, an arson at the Chicago Center (ZAU) facility caused operations across ZAU-controlled airspace to be suspended, including airport operations at Chicago's O'Hare and Midway International Airports, resulting in canceled flights. One employee at the facility was treated for smoke inhalation, while remaining employees were evacuated.
The public source identifies “Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center” as air Route Traffic Control Center in Aurora, Illinois, US. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Chicago, Route and Traffic.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5095481. Authority coordinates are 41.783, -88.331. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2024 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.