Major Delays

[few@two]

Was just looking at ceefax to confirm an arriving flight and noticed that there are delays to most of the inbound European flight to the london airports.

Most flights from Europe are delayed by upto half and hour many are for more, does this mean are French friends have been causing delays again with strict traffic flow????

Or has there been another contributing factor, can anybody shed any light on this?

[traveler]

My Director of Flight Operations says that if ATC stays the way it is now,
in 2011 30 % of the flights won't leave the airport at all !!
Which ones go ? I suppose the ones that pay the most for slots.

[few@two]

As far I can tell Gatwick has had a runway closure this afternoon and most a/c are now using Rwy 26R can anyone confirm this??

[AyrTC]

Apparently the main U.K ATC computer "went down" today for about an hour.It was lucky that there were not any new procedures being introduced today.......doh!!! :)

[BOEINGBOY1]

i was informed the main cause as to the majority of the atc problems suffered by most to/from uk this afternoon was again due to a computer failure within london acc. followed not long after by the main computer that feeds info to scottish acc. slot restraints were imposed to reduce airspace capacity by upto 75% and then gradually recovered to near normal. the forcast rvsm problems had very little effect whatsoever.

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IT'S BETTER TO BE ON THE GROUND, WISHING YOU WERE IN THE AIR - THAN IT IS TO BE IN THE AIR, WISHING YOU WERE ON THE GROUND !

[latccatsa]

The introduction of RVSM into UK airspace this morning would, I imagine be the most likely cause of most of the UK delays today as many sector are operating at a lower percentage of their capacity until everyone is happy. Or not.

[Gonzo]

The main host computer system went down for a period around midday. Within ten minutes at Heathrow the outbound delays went up to the hour mark, due to restrictions on departures, and inbounds were flowed (six mile spacing I believe).

The recovery was not helped by Flow Control trying to determine our departure order by allocating and continually changing the a/c slot times, which meant that many aircraft who would have gotten airborne on the 'one every seven minutes' Dover deps or 'one every 4 mins' northbound dep restriction, were now given 2-3 hour slot delays even though the restriction was a domestic, and some aircraft obviously were not ready for their slot, and so their place in the departure sequence went vacant!

Gonzo

[CrashDive]

..... and on the subject of RVSM I did indeed recieve my first RVSM level today, i.e. FL340 (on the way from Stansted to Belfast)

That said there was unfortunately no oposing trafic at either FL330 or FL350 so as yet I can't report on the 'pucker factor'..... but watch this space !

[information_alpha]

from an ATC'r!

You had better believe it, 1127z the sh@t hit the fan, we got MDI of one every ten minutes then this was replaced with every flight having a slot - glasgow to edinburgh included! (work that one out) it is a nightmare when it happens though all credit to you lot, everyone this morning was really helpful - we are having a nightmare too (upto 10 replacement strips for each aircraft as the slots change etc) and it is nice when the pilots appreciate that - thanks!

[Numpo-Nigit]

There was a new software delivery to NERC on the night of Wednesday/Thursday. Not only were there major problems getting the system to run subsequently, but it appears that the NERC problem was responsible for the HCS computer failure at LATCC. Still, all is on schedule for January 2002.......