Yes BEXIL160, it can happen again and again and again! The latest FLOP was caused by EXACTLY the same type of 'fault' as caused the previous one! In a nutshell the 'Irish Gap' problem where flights from Scottish, routing through Irish airspace and then into English airspace, if they have an amendment done on them cause the whole system to collapse!
The NOS (NAS Operational Support) team have fixed those two particular faults but are of the opinion that there are LOTS more out there just waiting for some amendment to trigger them, then BANGO!
It is a nonsense for the NATS CEO to say that there is a pile of gold to dig into!! For example the proposal a very few years ago to prevent things like the Irish Gap (which is caused because NAS only recognises one OLDI centre and, Scottish to Irish is one, then Irish to LACC is two and LACC to whereever on the continent is three!) was to have a NAS MIDI (basically a mini version of NAS) especially for Scottish, the rest of NAS treating them just like a normal external NAS unit. This would have been perfect! Allows Scottish to subsume Manch with no trouble and eventually allows LACC to subsume TC. But........ The cost was £5 million, with military buy in. However the MOD insisted on a totally transparent system, without regional divides, the cost then >KACHING< £18 million!! So NATS board backed off.
I believe they are currently looking at the Spanish system which can handle 4 OLDI's. They have already looked THREE times in 10 years at replacing the FDP system!!!!
But to stir murky waters further.
Do you all recall the luverly FLOP on 17th June 2000? Well it turns out that NATS board looked at this and came up with a host of actions to be taken to prevent repetition. Have all these actions come to fruition? No. Why not? I hear you cry! Basically because of lack of accountability by those very senior board members, most of whom have either moved on or left the company and did diddly squat about the tasks they were given to do.