Narrative:

We were anticipating a wind shift to go north. Somehow the time got pushed up. That in itself was a terrible call and probably why everything else ensued. We still had strong south winds and a level 5 cell that kept about 40 aircraft from departing and an unknown amount from landing. Had we stayed south; arrivals still would not have been able to come in; but it would've prevented all the departure delays. Additionally; dal stayed south which adds a complexity factor when trying to plan for go arounds. I was working LEA1. LE1 and LE3 were recently combined. Air carrier X called inbound to runway 35R. LE1 gave them the wind which was approx. 160 @ 12. Air carrier X said they could not accept the approach. Le initially told him to continue inbound and maintain 3000 but then we got wsa+25 all runways so we couldn't let him come into the airport. I attempted to coordinate with AR1 and told them we needed to pull air carrier X out now and that we wanted to go 140 and 3000. The arrival controller sounded like he/she didn't know what to say; I was wondering if I even called the right position. I asked him/her for a heading and altitude twice and got no response until someone else spoke and said that wasn't his/her airspace- call dallas south. This is infuriating that there appears to be the lack of a plan and an unwillingness to help. This was essentially an emergency situation now. So I called ds; told him we were pulling air carrier X out 140/3000. We proceeded to pull out two more flights. A final monitor may have stepped in at that point. I don't recall the completeness of my coordination because our tmc was yelling and throwing a fit; there was a whole lot of chaos in the tower by now. At one point; someone called and asked me what these go arounds were doing; I reiterated the instructions and told him they were on ds; he then told me he was ds and wasn't talking to them. My local controller and I did what we thought was the best course of action and tried to keep everyone notified. I don't know if our os and tm had any sense in the matter or were just steamrolled by the TRACON but safety was not considered when they chose to drive numerous aircraft into the airport with no out when they should've known none of that was going to work. Recommendation; the tower should not have agreed to a flow change to begin with. The tmc and os had been talking about the weather. The final controllers have to have a place to take pull outs; period. The only thing that could've been worse is if they were also running traffic to runway 1R. With all the other bad decisions; I'm surprised they weren't. I've been here for several years; and I have seen these same scenarios play out over and over and over!

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: DFW tower controller described runway change event that resulted in numerous go arounds and confusion; claiming the runway change decision was premature and lacked appropriate operational concerns.

Narrative: We were anticipating a wind shift to go north. Somehow the time got pushed up. That in itself was a terrible call and probably why everything else ensued. We still had strong south winds and a level 5 cell that kept about 40 aircraft from departing and an unknown amount from landing. Had we stayed south; arrivals still would not have been able to come in; but it would've prevented all the departure delays. Additionally; DAL stayed south which adds a complexity factor when trying to plan for go arounds. I was working LEA1. LE1 and LE3 were recently combined. Air Carrier X called inbound to Runway 35R. LE1 gave them the wind which was approx. 160 @ 12. Air Carrier X said they could not accept the approach. LE initially told him to continue inbound and maintain 3000 but then we got WSA+25 all runways so we couldn't let him come into the airport. I attempted to coordinate with AR1 and told them we needed to pull Air Carrier X out now and that we wanted to go 140 and 3000. The arrival controller sounded like he/she didn't know what to say; I was wondering if I even called the right position. I asked him/her for a heading and altitude twice and got no response until someone else spoke and said that wasn't his/her airspace- call Dallas South. This is infuriating that there appears to be the lack of a plan and an unwillingness to help. This was essentially an emergency situation now. So I called DS; told him we were pulling Air Carrier X out 140/3000. We proceeded to pull out two more flights. A final monitor may have stepped in at that point. I don't recall the completeness of my coordination because our TMC was yelling and throwing a fit; there was a whole lot of chaos in the tower by now. At one point; someone called and asked me what these go arounds were doing; I reiterated the instructions and told him they were on DS; he then told me he was DS and wasn't talking to them. My local controller and I did what we thought was the best course of action and tried to keep everyone notified. I don't know if our OS and TM had any sense in the matter or were just steamrolled by the TRACON but safety was not considered when they chose to drive numerous aircraft into the airport with no out when they should've known none of that was going to work. Recommendation; the tower should not have agreed to a flow change to begin with. The TMC and OS had been talking about the weather. The final controllers have to have a place to take pull outs; period. The only thing that could've been worse is if they were also running traffic to Runway 1R. With all the other bad decisions; I'm surprised they weren't. I've been here for several years; and I have seen these same scenarios play out over and over and over!

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.