Chaos in Scotland
 

Just got home from a flight EGKK to EGPF held en-route due to total failure of comms and radar at the Scottish ATC centre. Anyone know anything about this?

Power failure at Scottish yesterday evening. Lots of going in circles in the north of the country followed by Newcastle becoming very popular.

More info....
 

This was a planned power test that went horribly wrong!! The power to the Scottish Domestic operations room (and probably the Shanwick Oceanic Ops room) was completely lost, which resulted in loss of all main systems for about twenty minutes.

Only thing working was the secondary standby R/T system, which saved the day. Radar, phones, R/T and standby R/T all out for the duration. Not the most relaxing place to be at 2115 last night!!

Do airlines ever do power systems tests on aircraft when they are in flight with fare-paying passengers onboard????? - I think not!!! :ugh:

Wings level, Ball in the puddle!

Davey, you're brave announcing that to the world!!

Plus, chaos in Scotland, should be titled chaos over the whole of central England caused by some muppets decision somewhere!

How many supplies does the Scottish centre have anyway and what about the backup batteries?

Electronic Flight Progress Strips anyone.............................?

Now when I was a young sprog, some hairy ar$ed flight lieutenant taught me a valuable lesson:

a. Never agree to a standby power supply test on your watch.

b. If you have no choice, insist that it takes place at 0300 on a Sunday morning.

Bu**er off! Some of us are getting rather busy at 0300, on any given morning :E

Ok, apart from those who are playing around with the North Atlantic. You can have you power run just after breakfast. ;)

It's been kept rather quite down South....nothing on Natsnet, no gossip, nothing.....took a phone call from a narked ScATCC systems engineer to even know something had happened.

Probably kept quiet because it was a cock up as Davey announced above.

Must have been a humungeous huge cock up to have switched off the mains, the UPS and the generators all at the same time :rolleyes:

BD

Yes please, they work fine where I am . . . ;) :)

They still teach this at college. :ok:

I saw the Scottish GM at CTC yesterday! I bet he went north sharpish!

This is the failure which is supposed never to happen. Because the OES cannot be relied upon, all NATS critical systems are supplied from uniterruptible power supplies. ie the OES keeps the batteries charged and they feed inverters which power the equipment for a certain length of time. This time is determined as being sufficient to safely clear the skies of all traffic in the event that the generators fail to start which would keep the batteries charged until the OES comes back.

Obviously something didn't work very well!

A I :confused: :confused: :{

Wait for it....

"A NATS spokesperson said safety was not compromised "

Coming to a comic strip near you, soon :}

All hush-hush it would appear!
 

I think that radarspod has hit the nail on the head. The silence is deafening up north of the border. Nobody is even talking about it above shop floor level. Nothing on NATS intranet site, no "Well done chaps, back for tea and medals", nothing at all. How strange. Least said soonest mended??? :mad: Once again, I think not!!

Almost as quiet as the airwaves last evening!!


Wings level, ball in the puddle.

Fair point, but when exactly is the exact moment when the whole centre/facility doesn't have something airborne... The modern world makes these things more concerning; before 'consolidation' a failure in one unit was a small but significant event, now it's a catsorophy as it is so wide spread.

As for the electronic strips thing, upon failure here we have dumped the Flight plan data base onto A4 paper, distributed relevent copies to each and every console and had our own A4 "strips"... This of course assumes the power to the printers/photo copiers and flight plan box is working.

I think the more that software gets a hold in our world, every 'upgrade' is considered a very hi risk; cause you never really know what the end result will be until it's switched back on.

No point in having any sort of flight strip if your radios aren't working. :hmm:

safety compromised => file a report

<<No point in having any sort of flight strip if your radios aren't working. >>

Yep.... I expected that sort of response from a bloke in a blue suit.