Date: 201411
Local time of day: 1201-1800
Location: ZID.ARTCC, IN
Aircraft: Widebody; Low Wing; 3 Turbojet Eng
Operator: Military
Operating under: Part 91
Flight plan: IFR
Flight phase: Cruise
Airspace: Class A ZID
ATC / advisory: Center ZID
Second aircraft: Widebody; Low Wing; 3 Turbojet Eng
Reporter organization: Government
Reporter function: Enroute
Reporter qualification: Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Human factors: Communication Breakdown; Confusion; Distraction; Workload; Time Pressure; Situational Awareness
Anomaly: ATC Issue All Types; Airspace Violation All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Detector: Person Air Traffic Control
When detected: In-flight
Result: Air Traffic Control Separated Traffic
Contributing factors: Aircraft; Human Factors; Procedure
Primary problem: Procedure

Narrative: While I was conducting OJTI with my trainee during a very busy session that my trainee was having problems keeping up with we got a call from Aircraft Y telling us that he was going to break up from the Aircraft X flight in about ten minutes and was trying to give us his after break up flight request. Being as it was busy I keyed up over my trainee and told Aircraft Y that we were busy and to stand by we would get back to him soon. A couple minutes went by and Aircraft Y once again keyed up and said that he was now ready to split up from the formation. At this point I realized it was too complex for my trainee and I told him to slide out of the way while I took care of this split up. Since Aircraft Y was not the leader of the flight I went back and asked Aircraft X that Aircraft Y was already on my frequency and asked if it was alright if I worked with Aircraft Y. While this was going on I told our d-side to have sectors 83 and 86 to block for the split up since this was happening right on the boundary with all three sectors. My d side said everyone was blocking so I suggested Aircraft Y to fly heading 360 to try to achieve lateral separation. It took a few minutes before Aircraft Y was able to turn to the north and at this time my supervisor came up and asked what altitude Aircraft Y was at since there was traffic heading right at them at FL290. When I identified the traffic that the supervisor brought up I told Aircraft Y when able maintain FL280 to which he replied that he was waiting to clear the Aircraft X flight and would descend to FL280 when able. I then called sector 83 and notified them that Aircraft Y was heading to a 360 heading and to turn their traffic to a 180 heading to avoid the conflict. There was no flight plan in the system so we had to create one. Once we had lateral separation I terminated MARSA and was able to give Aircraft Y its clearance. By this time the flight was well into sector 83.I always thought that military break up requests were supposed to go through the flight leader which in this case was Aircraft X. Aircraft Y took it upon himself to go ahead and cut out Aircraft X from the coordination through the flight leader. When this was all happening there was a lot of confusion with me taking the sector from the trainee and trying to get the flight plan started and entered into the machine correctly. Our training team could of been assigned a tracker but I am not sure how much this would of helped being this situation. The flight was in a bad spot for the break up to happen; the sector was already very busy; and the information we were getting from the flight was not correct.




Synopsis: ZID Controller describes a flight break up that wasn't the usual type of break up resulting in an airspace violation.