AIS web site login

[Gertrude the Wombat]

I don't seem to be able to log in to the AIS web site any more. Although I know I'm using the right user name and password I've also tried the "I forgot my password" screen and it says it's never heard of me, which is gibberish because I've got the original welcome email showing that they are perfectly well aware of my name and email address.

So, I emailed the contact address on the web site, [email protected] to ask for assistance, and a month later I'm still waiting for a reply.

Given that email doesn't work, does anyone have any idea how to contact these people to sort it out? (Other than making a phone call during working hours when I'm supposed to be working, that is.)

[ShyTorque]

Why not just re-register? That should work, I just did so earlier this week without any problem

[Mike Cross]

From the FAQ (accessible from the homepage without needing to log in)
14 Why doesn’t the web site recognised my user name and password, when I know they are
correct?
There is a ‘housekeeping’ system designed to manage the subscribed users to the site. It is designed to remove user accounts that have not been accessed for six months. It will also remove any account that has not been accessed within the first month of registration.
Does that fit?

Surprised you have a problem with email, they're usually pretty good, send them a reminder or call them.

Mike

[BlueRobin]

Brrr Brrrr, *click* "ello AIS..."

Why are people frightened of using the phone these days? :confused:

Give them a bell!

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Brrr Brrrr, *click* "ello AIS..."
Why are people frightened of using the phone these days? :confused:
Give them a bell!
I'm not frightened, it's just that I get paid by the hour so taking time off work during office hours to hang on a line listening to call centre music for an hour or two is very very expensive.

[IO540]

I don't know why they delete scarcely used accounts. They represent exactly zero server traffic and exactly zero server CPU time.

A typical UK PPL might do just 10 hours (say 10 flights) a year, and if they are mostly trivial local bimbles, or flights with a mate who got the notams off his own account, it's quite possible for the pilot's account to be deleted.

[Mike Cross]

I'm not frightened, it's just that I get paid by the hour so taking time off work during office hours to hang on a line listening to call centre music for an hour or two is very very expensive.
HaHaHaHaHa!
Get real Gertrude. UK AIS has a complement of around 30 people working shifts to provide a service 24 Hrs a day, 365 days a year. Call Centre? Music? I think you have an overactive imagination.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

HaHaHaHaHa!
Get real Gertrude. UK AIS has a complement of around 30 people working shifts to provide a service 24 Hrs a day, 365 days a year. Call Centre? Music? I think you have an overactive imagination.
Well, it's just that when an organisation invites you to contact them by email, and then spends a month failing to reply to it, you don't have very high hopes of their phone service.

This is based on years of experience of contacting many large organisations.

======

I have now re-registered, with the same user name I had before. This was, to my utter astonishment, accepted, just as if the entire record of my existence had been completely wiped.

So what happened to the audit trail then?? Suppose I am now prosecuted for something that happened a year ago, and part of the prosecution case is a false claim that I didn't check the NOTAMs, and I put in a Data Subject Request for my records to prove that I did??

[Edited to add: I have spend the last several decades getting paid to build computer systems. This one is not behaving in any way that any of my employers or clients would have been happy with. I would have reasonably expected:

(1) an email warning of imminent suspension of the account
(2) some mechanism to revive a suspended account
(3) on attempting to log in later, a message saying "your account has been suspended for the following reason, do such-and-such to get it back" rather than the system pretending it has never heard of me at all ever
(4) some reassurance that despite the account having been wiped the audit trail is still there really.]

[Mike Cross]

AIUI:-

The audit trail is only kept for a limited time. A year after the event is not the time an investigation starts.

One assumes you followed up your email when you didn't get a reply?

The housekeeping exercise came about because of the large number of people who, having forgotton their login details, simply re-registered. This resulted in huge numbers of inactive accounts clogging up the system and bu@@ering up the stats. It's no good reporting that you have 50,000 registered users when only 5,500 are actually making use of your service. The fact that accounts are deleted if unused for 6 months is there in the FAQ's.

No-one (least of all UK AIS) pretends that the Web Interface is as good as it could be. At the last AIS customer liaison meeting (which I attended) Phil Bate, Manager UK AIS, was quite candid that he would like to see it replaced. At the time it was procured it was NATS policy to procure COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf) software. AIS software has by its nature a limited market (there are under 100 ICAO contracting States) and the choice of suppliers is limited. Given that the principal user of the Web Interface contributes nothing to its costs and the CAA is required to be self-funding it's all a bit tricky to get funding for bells and whistles like warnings that accounts are going to be deleted and recovery of deleted accounts that were never part of the original design.

I'm not trying to be argumentative here, just pragmatic.

The fact that I can now filter NOTAM myself rather than go through the pages of stuff in the old A8 bulletin, do the same worldwide, download and print aerodrome plates, access the entire AIP and AIC's, and do it all for free is a huge improvement on what was there before.


Mike

[BEagle]

But why is there any NEED for a log-in account and password?

The faster, easier to use French SIA NOTAM doesn't require such things...... Why does AIS?

[High Wing Drifter]

But why is there any NEED for a log-in account and password?
Agree, but it should be an optional extra for saved NOTAM queries and the like
which are useful.

[Mike Cross]

But why is there any NEED for a log-in account and password?
Same could be said of the Met Office site but no-one seems to bleat about that for some reason.

It's a Quality Assurance thing. ISO 9001 (which AIS is accreditted to) requires you to be able to measure your outputs and investigate non-conformances. How can you investigate a problem if you have no way of linking the complainant to the output?

I imagine it also helps in preventing Denial of Service attacks by malware and hackers.

[rustle]

Same could be said of the Met Office site but no-one seems to bleat about that for some reason.

No-one "bleats" about Met Office logins because they use cookies and you log in once: Not every time you go to the site.

In fact I can think of zero other sites (except my bank) which don't do this.

[Mike Cross]

AIS are interested in Gertrude's suggestion of a Call Centre and Music on hold. As they have no budget for either they're working on a system where one of them will answer the phone, read out a list of options and then play music to the caller. They only have one radio in the office and it's at the far end but they'll turn the volume up and hope callers will be able to hear it.:E

[BlueRobin]

Which goes to prove the AIS office are not faceless automatons and have a sense of humour!

[rustle]

AIS are interested in Gertrude's suggestion of a Call Centre and Music on hold. As they have no budget for either they're working on a system where one of them will answer the phone, read out a list of options and then play music to the caller. They only have one radio in the office and it's at the far end but they'll turn the volume up and hope callers will be able to hear it.:E

Far too complex.

Simply re-route the inbound call to Sky customer services.

By the time you eventually speak to a "customer services agent" you'll have completely forgotten why you rang them in the first place so you won't notice that they have no idea about login problems, and it will be too late to fly that day anyway. :E

[Fuji Abound]

"Far too complex."

I agree.

However there is an even better solutions than Skys.

Follow Orange's example and you will find it is almost impossible to select an option that enables you to talk to a human being - perfect! Then you can send an email and never get a reply to that either.

[BEagle]

No-one "bleats" about Met Office logins because they use cookies and you log in once! Not every time you go to the site.

Quite so!

Not interested in the ISO 9-whatever blah; people should not need to log in every time they want to retrieve information critical to safety of flight.

Please sort it.

[IO540]

ISO9000 is a shamelessly exploited marketing / job creation scheme which (thankfully) has no basis in law.

There is no legal reason for the AIS site requiring a login. However, if you did get notams showing a clear route and then get into trouble, you may wish to be able to fall back onto some site log showing that you got the briefing. Otherwise, all you will have is a hard copy of the briefing - and how many pilots keep hard copies of their notams? That's where some kind of user identification is useful.

However, I find it hard to believe that AIS log the actual data that was delivered to the pilot - that could be a lot of data. You could login and download the AIP for everywhere from the UK to Albania. So I don't really think AIS log the data :) This must massively undermine the legal standing of anything that AIS do log. The only way around this problem would be to have some sort of version control on their server, and the log of the pilot's access would contain the notam briefing text itself, plus links to the (potentially archived) contamporaneous version of any PDFs etc. Such a system, if it is to have legal standing under the rules for evidence, would also need to have internal access controls, both physical and electronic, so that insiders could not amend the logs. Somehow I don't think the software does that...

I keep hard copies of notams for any VFR flights I do in French airspace, for 1 year, because the DGAC is known to sit on a case for 6 months before contacting the CAA requesting the persecution (not a spelling mistake, BTW) of the pilot. Luckily, with an IR, I am unlikely to be doing many VFR flights there in the future, and IFR is under ATC control.

A more likely reason for a login is to do with paranoia over "not proper pilots" (flight simulator users) overrunning the site. (Believe it or not, there are many thousands of FS2004 pilots who do their flying really seriously, even validating their routes through CFMU, etc; I feel a bit sorry for them since many are people who cannot afford to fly or fail the medical). This won't really keep them out but it is something that is done a lot. For example the Eurocontrol Skyview project says clearly it is not for flight sim users, so one has to go through a few hoops to get a login, and they kill your account after a few months of non-use anyway.

I imagine it also helps in preventing Denial of Service attacks by malware and hackers

Not really since anybody can login with a script and download every PDF they have.

[Mike Cross]

Gertie

I've had an e-mail from Barry Davidson, the AIS Quality Manager as a result of his reading your post. If you'd like to give them a buzz on 020 8745 3450/3451 and ask for either Tim Williams or Dave Smith and let them know the date you sent your e-mail they'll check it out and see if it was received and if a reply was sent. If you prefer to use email it's [email protected] or [email protected]

He's also invited you and any other forumites to visit the AIS office. It's in the Control Tower Building at Heathrow and well worth the visit if you can make the time. Contact to arrange this is Lesley Clayton, [email protected]

Mike

[Gertrude the Wombat]

it's all a bit tricky to get funding for bells and whistles
It would have taken less than a minute and cost, to a reasonable approximation, exactly 0p to have added to the login failed screen some static text saying "this login might have failed because your account has been deleted, see FAQ 14, if that's the case you can re-register with the same name".

For an extra not-very-many seconds and an extra 0p the "see FAQ 14" could even have been a clickable link!!!

Not a lot of "funding" required, I think - it's just a question of getting it right in the first place, hardly a big deal.

[Mike Cross]

Gertie

No problem then. You tell Thales IS, the software vendors that they can modify the software for nothing. While you're at it I have a few minor niggles in Windows Server 2003 that you could get Microsoft to fix for free. Fact is I'm afraid, if you want a commercial software vendor to customise his product you will have to pay.

Are you going to take AIS up on their offer above? They've received no prompting from me, just responded spontaneously to your complaint. Or is your interest only in slagging them off?

Other briefing services are of course available if you don't like what AIS offer.

IO540
AIS log the briefs that are taken. At the top of your brief is a number beginning with the letter R. That is the individual brief ID. The briefs are pulled on request when incidents are investigated as a matter of routine. They are also pulled when a complaint is received. To give you a f'rinstance, a complaint was received from a pilot that the Reds display at Eastbourne was not included in his brief. By locating the brief that was taken AIS established that the user had entered the date in DDMMYY format rather than the ICAO standard of YYMMDD and got a briefing for some time into the future. therefore he only got the NOTAM that were from xxxxxx to PERM.

As the owner of an ISO9001 accreditted business I don't agree with your rather sweeping dismissal of it. Used properly it's a good tool. I do see plenty of examples of it being misused, UK AIS is not one of them. Quality systems have an important role to play, as Cessna found out to their cost when misrigged control cables were found on their production line.

AFAIK AIS have no problem with simmers using their service, and it is of course possible for you to register as M Mouse or D Duck if you choose to. However if you want to use the FAA's DUATS online system you will need to enter your Pilot's Certificate Number and your address, which are cross-checked against the FAA pilot database before you can use the system. Sorry but I can't see any problems with the AIS login requirement. Show me an example of your personal data being abused by AIS and I might sit up and take notice.

Mike

[ShyTorque]

Please do not abuse my personal data.

Signed D.Duck

[BEagle]

Yes, Mr Cross - but why is it necessary to have to login every damn time!

Please get it sorted - or explain why not.

[Fuji Abound]

Mike

I am really confused. Last time the AIS came up I got some stick for criticising the service they provide.

Since then there would seem to have been more criticism on this forum and elsewhere by many others, including among other things down time, lack of user friendliness, incorrect verbal briefs, failure to reply to emails, deleting registered users accounts without notification to mention just a few of the comments that come to mind.

You do a good job of defending them. I understand your role representing GAs interests and appreciate you may walk a tight rope.

However the fact remains that:

1. Any criticism of the AIS web site is "blamed" on Thales the commercial provider. I sense the knee jerk reaction to be - we cant do anything about it, blame Thales. However if Thales are providing such a poor service why is it their contract hasn’t been reviewed. How long do the users have to put up with - we cant do anything about that, it is down to Thales. In short will Thales be “blamed” for ever or can we look forward to the day when there is no need for a scape goat?

2. Some useful comments have come forward. On this thread alone the suggestion was notifying users if their account is terminated. This does not seem unreasonable, nor would it seem to be rocket science to achieve. Yet my perception (perhaps wrongly) is the AIS sees no reason no adopt this suggestion in future. That seems to me rather arrogant and dismissive of the “customer”. Incidentally I assume such notifications could be sent without having to rely on the Thales system to do so.

3. As Drauk has shown it would seem readily possible to produce a third party product that is infinitely superior to that achieved by the AIS at presumably very small cost. I appreciate the AIS has to meet their ICAO commitments and operate under the constraint of their contract with the CAA but is neither party interested in offering a service that does not have all the hallmarks of the most clumsy user interface of just about any web site I can think of?

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Gertie
No problem then. You tell Thales IS, the software vendors that they can modify the software for nothing.
No, they should have got it right the first time. There is also some responsibility on the client - a really clever trick is not to actually pay the bill until the contractor has got it right - decades of experience as both client and contractor has taught me that that approach works extremely well.

Are you going to take AIS up on their offer above? They've received no prompting from me, just responded spontaneously to your complaint.
Deducing from your posts how the software actually works (based on decades of experience of reverse engineering crap software) I manged to re-register myself. And I had an email from AIS today as well, so I'm sorted now thanks.

[Mike Cross]

Useful points have indeed come forward.

The points re cookies for login and also the irritation of not being able to just hit return after entering your password but instead having to click on or tab to the tick mark have been raised with AIS in the past and have been on the list of things to do for a long time.

Gertie's original point was that his login didn't work and he hadn't received a reply to his email. He hasn't said as much but it looks as though we now know what happened. The automatic deletion of inactive accounts is a relatively recent change on the system. AIS are aware of the points raised.

However in the overall scheme of things these are minor irritations at worst, sorting out the recent intermittent non-availability of the site has had a much higher priority.

There are two separate systems in use here. The main database management system (AIS Dynamic Information Management Sytem or ADIMS), and the Web application (Aeronautical e-services or AES). Both of them are products of Thales IS. AIS does not own the source code to these products. AIS are a bunch of Air Traffickers, they do not employ any IT professionals. They therefore have to pay external people to do IT related tasks. They receive no funding from GA (apart from those who pay en-route charges).

AIS are happy with the performance of ADIMS but are not happy with AES. The plan is therefore to replace AES. The new product will be required to integrate with the back-end Oracle database within ADIMS. Quite how easy this will be remains to be seen. It seems to me that there are a couple of options:-
1. Tight integration, where the Web interface runs real-time queries on the core database.
2. A looser standalone application, using the approach taken by drauk, which will maintain its own database, updated from the core database, and run the queries on that.

If you have suggestions for improvement, please send them to AIS for consideration.

Forgive me, but is what we are talking about here akin to a re-arrangement of deckchairs on the Titanic? I have a few more pressing issues that I would like to see attended to, like:-

How come one executive agency of the DfT can sort out the Vehicle Testing Stations but another comes up with the Star Annual as the way of dealing with aircraft with C of R's that have been issued when they should not have, and then comes up with the latest proposals for continuing airworthiness?

Why can you learn to fly from an unlicensed field in an aircraft not maintained to PT standards with a remunerated instructor who does not hold a commercial license if the aircraft in question is an Ikarus C42 but if you want to do it in a C152 you can't?

Why is a CPL and Class 1 medical required if money changes hands for instruction but not otherwise?

Why is GA being forced down the road of Mode S when the only beneficiary is the commercial airlines wanting to build a safety case for CAT in uncontrolled airspace?

Why are Permit aircraft considered more likely to plummet if flown over a built-up area or at night or under IFR than those with a C of A?

Why are the Forums full of people saying "The CAA should do something" when everything they do restricts and complicates us more and costs us money?

The list of threats to GA is a long one. The failure of someone to respond to an e-mail and the irritation involved in having to fill in your logon details aren't terrifically high on my version of it I'm afraid.

Mike

[SkyHawk-N]

The list of threats to GA is a long one. The failure of someone to respond to an e-mail and the irritation involved in having to fill in your logon details aren't terrifically high on my version of it I'm afraid.
Mike

To add an auto-login using cookies would not take much work and would save many people a lot of irritation on a daily basis.

[rustle]

Forgive me, but is what we are talking about here akin to a re-arrangement of deckchairs on the Titanic? I have a few more pressing issues that I would like to see attended to, like...

[list chopped]

Mike

Nice list Mike, but none of those thing affects us every single time we want to go flying, so the "irritation factor" is much lower.

There are plenty of discussions about some on your list, anyway. Mode S makes a regular appearance on here (and elsewhere) for starters ;)

As for Thales "getting the blame" for everything, I don't think that's the case in reality.

AIS bought something and implemented it in August 2002 (from our point of view) and it has never been up to the job. Ever.

Some aspects are better than the old briefing sheets (A1/A8); things like narrow route briefs etc. But some things are considerably worse.

Reliability never seemed to be an issue before. User unfriendliness of the system was never an issue before. Interoperability across platforms (browser etc) was never an issue before. Whole summers of unavailability were never an issue before. Logging in was never an issue before.

The "fixes" that Thales have implemented are crap. Look at the state of the pages now they've recoded it to work on browsers other than IE5! The boxes don't line up, the text looks like some loony with a crayon wrote it, the drop down menus obliterate stuff.

Technically it is Thales design and implementation that is diabolical, but the buck has to stop with the people who paid for it and presumably still pay maintenance for it.

When you can see (within nano-seconds) the sort of output that could be delivered it only highlights the failings of the present system.

Whilst I appreciate that AIS are listening, I'll wager they couldn't buy a "drauk" solution because their procurement monkeys don't have him on their list.

[IO540]

Mike

A lot of your points are very valid (probably all of them) but most of them (particularly the Class 1 med for instruction) are deeply embedded job creation / revenue protection schemes which cannot be tackled without first dismantling their respective beneficiaries and axe grinders (the CAA and the flight training industry).

Think how much a flying school at a licensed airport, with a bunch of ATPL hour building instructors working there at a very handy £10/day retainer, would welcome another school setting up at a small nearby unlicensed airfield, with much more experienced PPL-level instructors working on Class 2 medicals, etc etc.

[Mike Cross]

I'd sooner think of the poor old hour buiilder. At the moment he gets his FATPL and then goes into instruction, where his IR and twin ratings lapse while building up his hours.

Wouldn't it be better if he entered his ATPL course AFTER he'd got the experience under his belt and came out with fresh ratings and ready for interview?

Can't the schools see the benefit of reducing their cost base?

Mike

[IO540]

AIUI, most hour builders put in a concerted block of effort - over a year or so - into getting through the exams and the flight training for the MEIR (probably in a Seneca or similar).

Then they need to find a way to build whatever hundreds of hours in their logbook, while thumbing through airline job adverts.

I am not sure how many would do it the other way around because one could spend years building the hours, earning little money, and then fail the MEIR flight training or the Class 1 medical.

They would also have little flight experience, because IMHO those private pilots that do a lot of flying are those not aiming for airline jobs. The starting pay of a first officer can be £25k p.a. or even lower and anybody who thinks that is interesting isn't likely to have the budget to acquire much GA flying experience.

Whereas under the present system the school gets somebody who has perhaps 150hrs in his logbook. The vast majority of PPLs never reach 100hrs, ever.

[Mike Cross]

Suspect I didn't explain the suggestion properly.

A simple amendment to the ANO stating that "a flight for the purpose of instruction in flying for the grant or renewal of a PPL or a rating thereon is a Private Flight" would allow schools to pay PPL/FI's.

The aspiring ATPL could then be paid a pittance while building his hours, as now. He would still need 200 Hrs before doing the FI rating as now, the minimum qualification to instruct would continue to be a PPL/FI as now.

If there is a worry about whether or not he should embark on a career as a commercial pilot then this (http://www.gapan.org/careers/aptitude.htm) would be a far cheaper option than doing the MEIR just to see if he can pass.

If he embarks on the MEIR and ATPL with 700 to 1000 Hrs under his belt rather than 200 he'll find it easier and get more out of it, and he'll be paying interest on his loans for far less time.

A friend borrowed a load of dosh to do his FATPL and FI. He knew he needed around 750 Hrs to get an airline interview so he got a job as an instructor with a good school. During that time his MEIR lapsed (more cost) and the requirement went up from 750 to 1000 Hrs. Now he has to borrow more money to get a Type Rating. I dread to think of the interest he's paid since the original loan was taken out.

Mike

[Whopity]

Use the French site its much easier and no log in:
http://www.sia.aviation-civile.gouv.fr/default_uk.htm

You can also re-register on the NATS site using any old garbage it accepts it OK! Thus proving what a load of twaddle the requirement to register is!

[IO540]

Thus proving what a load of twaddle the requirement to register is!

That's true from the access control perspective but if you needed to prove you got a briefing for a flight 3 months previously then presumably you would supply the bogus ID under which you logged in, so they could retrieve the briefing.

Personally I use a bogus ID too but it's moot since they are bound to be logging the IP and the user is thus always traceable (short of doing it from a cafe). As with all postings on pprune :)

[mad_bear]

Personally I use a bogus ID too but it's moot since they are bound to be logging the IP and the user is thus always traceable (short of doing it from a cafe). As with all postings on pprune :)

Or from a workplace, college, or school with a shared outbound HTTP proxy. Or a home DSL service that uses dynamic IP allocation. Or a dial-up modem pool. The IP number I am currently using is shared by about five thousand people.

[IO540]

Or a dial-up modem pool. The IP number I am currently using is shared by about five thousand people.

Apologies for getting really off topic but every ISP maintains a log of which dialup user had which IP and when. This is why being on a dynamic IP gives you no protection; a court order served on the ISP will reveal all. That's why e.g. Freeserve would block any operations (other than email reading) done via dial-up accounts if the dialler's CLI was disabled. However, there probably are dial-up ISPs who don't log the CLI.

It's possible to be accessing via a proxy which doesn't keep logs, sure. Or via an anonymising proxy website in Russia (plenty of them about, for a subscription) which will probably stick a finger up to any query. But proper ISPs do keep logs.

[mad_bear]

Or a dial-up modem pool. The IP number I am currently using is shared by about five thousand people.

Apologies for getting really off topic [...]
It's possible to be accessing via a proxy which doesn't keep logs, sure. Or via an anonymising proxy website in Russia (plenty of them about, for a subscription) which will probably stick a finger up to any query. But proper ISPs do keep logs.

Yes, I agree that this is off topic. But the coporate proxy that I am using right now does not keep logs. With seven million transactions a day, where would it keep them? And even if it did, it would still be difficult to track down a specific individual from a specific upstream IP in the log, because all the terminals use dynamically-allocated IPs internally, and all are shared by different users. It wouldn't be impossible, but it would be quite difficult. I suspect that most schools and universities use non-logging proxies (at least, they always did when I was in charge of that kind of thing).

My point is not to get into a completely off-topic technical argument, but merely to point out that an on-line service which is set up on the basis that it will necessarily be able to identify individual human users by their IP numbers is likely to get into trouble eventually.