It's all semantics to cover up for a system which seems to be teetering on the edge of stability.
Everett is correct in that this is the first failure which is attributable solely to the NERC system which has brought the place to a halt during the day. What he skates over, however, is the fact that the first NAS failure was corrected relatively quickly, but the NERC system had to remain off for the REST OF THE DAY because of the perceived difficulty in getting it back on line again. That in my book is a failure of the NERC system as it failed to do the job for which it was designed: move air traffic more efficiently than we did at LATCC. Had we still been at LATCC on that day we would have been up and running again in about an hour.
You might not also be aware that at about 1230 local today the NAS link failed for about 2-3 minutes and we all prepared to go manual. This was shortly after we had heard that the TACT computer at FMP Brussels had also failed. Delays peaked at about 178000 minutes total, I think. That's 123.6 days!!
All of this points to a system which is inherently unstable, and cannot cope with inputs which it doesn't like. The computer upon which I am typing this has protection in it which stops me doing things which will make it crash. It cost just under £1000. Why can't a multi-million pound system do the same???
