A contract employee at a suburban air traffic control center set fire to the facility with gasoline on Friday, brought air traffic to a standstill at O’Hare and Midway airports on Friday.

The employee, angered that he was being transferred to Hawaii, deliberately set fire to the center stopping up to 1,500 flights at the two Chicago airports. His actions caused a rippling effect through the air traffic network nation-wide, causing cancellations as far away as Dallas.

The air traffic control center in Aurora is tasked with handling high-altitude traffic as well as traffic landing or taking off from Chicago airports. Aircraft headed for Chicago were diverted to airports in other cities or turned back to their points of departure.

The man, set the fire in the basement of the Aurora facility 40 miles west of Chicago before inflicting knife wounds to himself investigators say. The blaze caused fire damage to wiring and water damage as the sprinkler system was triggered. The fire was extinguished by 7 am this morning.

The disgruntled employee was taken to the hospital for treatment of his knife wounds as well as burns.

After over a stoppage of over four hours in the O’Hare and Midway airports, flights began taking to the air once again, but at a much reduced rate.

  air traffic, arson, aurora, chicago, employee, nation