Curious for the folks out in the northeast, what this practically means for localized GA VFR (and IFR I suppose) traffic. Imagine it's the equivalent of LA Center shutting, but even cruising through LA you rarely talk with center unless you go outside SoCal approach/departure.
We went through this after the
Chicago Center fire shut down ZAU for about 3 weeks, and it appears that ZID is handling things in a similar fashion. I would imagine all facilities and the ATCSCC are working on similar contingency plans right now.
Basically, all of the traffic that wasn't landing or departing within ZAU's airspace was routed around, and traffic in or out had to descend down to lower altitudes, where the TRACONs handled them. It was really weird being IFR at 6,000 feet in the Mooney and having airliners fly a couple thousand feet over me! Eventually, they were able to use equipment at neighboring facilities to work the edges at least.
Now, that may not work at a larger scale with multiple centers going down. Here in the midwest and northeast, there are TRACONs all over the place. I'm pretty sure I could get from, say, Madison, WI to New York without ever talking to a Center if I needed to - It'd be Madison, Rockford, Chicago (approach), South Bend, Fort Wayne, Toledo, Mansfield, Cleveland, Akron-Canton, Youngstown, Pittsburgh, Johnstown, Potomac, Harrisburg, Philly, maybe Allentown, New York.
But, starting at the same airport and going the other direction - No TRACON bordering Madison to the North or West, and there are wide swaths of the country where there are no TRACONs out west. In fact, just ZLA and ZLC would create a mid-continent gap... Anyone know if there's enough contiguous TRACONs to jump that?
Interesting times, for sure.
I mean, Milwaukee already has the "GOPAC2" arrival. 
