Thales Atc System
 

Hello Ctlers....I would like to get some feedback from those
using the THALES ATC SYSTEM. What are the pros and cons.
Appreciate your views.:ok:

It is hard to give such information.
It depends on many factors,such as: softver,aispace complexity,ATCOs and so on ,but you may consider Thales system solution as Mercedes in car industry.
Finally it will be conected with money that your company wishes to pay.

thales atc system
 

ask some of the irish atcos who have had frozen screens disappearing signals and shutdowns they all think its great:rolleyes:

Stay Away.

Its not controller friendly. Any 'modification' is cost prohibitive.
And when it fails, as it does, no one knows how to resolve it - lots of head scratching and crossing of fingers. Three system shut downs in Dublin in the last four weeks...

Thales System
 

Thnxs guys..appreciate your replies..wud like to hear more from Irish friends regarding the shutdowns. what was the recovery period like?
The demos showed a standalone system in-case main shuts down.Do u guys have it at your Centres?
Hey Singapurcanac...are with SIN ATC?:ok:

Something strange always happens.
1.Why there is always a DUPE alarm when there should not happen ? But why therer is not a DUPE alarm when should have ?
2.When I working this morning ,there is an aircraft took off without an FDR ,then I try to make an radar tag for it ,but the system said "the FDR is already exists" ,but it did not !!!
3.Sometimes the system may lost the radar tag information only leave a 2nd radar surveillance information on radar or there is another same 2nd radar surveillance information flys along with a normal radar tag !!

Thales
 

Thnxs macker...the demo was a breeze but I guess u guys have seen the storm.
we'll keep this facts in view for future questionings.
appreciate ur replies:ok:

Two more failures in Dublin today. Airport shut for 2 hours. Now operating at severely reduced capacity.

Hi Veloo

I've been working with Thales the past two years, here's what I've found

If it runs completely error free, it seems to be highly effective, some problems though:
1: RADTAGS (impromptu radar tags) seem to disappear for no reason
2: RAM (Route adherence monitor)(I think) goes off for apparently no reason sometimes... Even though the acft is enroute or even only just ariborne
3: It seems, in our airspace, when helicopters get too close together squawking 2600, for some reason they couple and show a squawk of 7600 thus triggering an RCF alarm.
4: Personal opinion, but all the alarms sound the same, regardless of their meaning, I'd like to see some diversity in this regard to channel the focus where needed. especially when you're getting multiple "false" alarms.
5: In the same light, the alarms are also a little excessive, once the alarm goes off, it seems never to end.
6: Last and certainly not least, we experience a system failure about once every two weeks. Down time can vary from 20 minutes, to a couple hours, depending on the problem:*

Hope it helps...

Looks to me like Mercedes will not be happy with the
Comparison

@chillie,
what do you want to say? That other solutions(raytheon,selecta,indra) work without problem? have you been informed about completely system failure in one European system,recently? They lost: radar picture both primary and secondary,plus all voice communication devices and so on,with some 150+ planes on frequency. Only private mobile telephone worked. And their system is not Thales.
So, every particular system is vulnerable. It is just question of time and place.
from my point of view Thales is good solution but people sometimes are not ready to accept and learn enough. Of course,management likes money i.e. it is better to give yourself bonus rather than to invest into operational system.
That is not Thales failure.

SINGAPURCANAC, I would draw your attention to the iaa/dublin threads here at the moment. The failures of the system are so frequent, that confidence has been lost.
The extent of this is that currently, 4 days after the Thales Eurocat sat down (twice!!!) the system is still operating on a reduced capacity. This is for fear that it will sit down again.
Safety first, but who do you think is to blame?

@beamwidth,
If you read carefully my post you will never find that I said Thales was perfect. Anyhow it is just an electronic and softwer equipment and as such is vulnerable.

Point taken!
The Eurocat is breaking down so frequently, that it would be a misnomer to say it was vulnerable, its appears defenceless against any anomoly that causes it to degrade

Could you please answer to pprune community who did evaluation when you buy new system,and who made Safety assesment of new equipment before new equipment was bought?
if they had done job properly you and your colleagues would have easier job those days.
I may bet that someone from your company didn't "produce" adequate procedures for such cases and even more your company didn't buy exactly what they need.
If you have two separate system,both capable for expected traffic level you will never see completely system break down.
you can't explain to me that your company is working properly. From safety point of view.
From previous threads I realised that your company hasn't hired and trainned people for more than six years. Traffic increased considerably but you remain the same or even reduced number of operational ATCOs.

No ,Thales is not the only one who should be blamed for current problems.

Unfortunatelly, Michel O' Leary knows his job.
So far no one has proved differently!

In the last instance; who did the acceptance tests? (were ATCOs involved?) Did the system function in parallel with the old one for an acceptable period without going Pete Tong?

Dublin ATCO's got some minor input into the system shortly before it went live. It's inadequacies were very apparent but the system had been long chosen at that stage.

The system chosen was an en route system, modified for a terminal area environment.

The IAA have claimed the system passed it's safety assessment procedures with flying colours. They probably still do.

ATCO's who have highlighted problems have had very little success in achieving any changes.

Conflict of interest
 

It is important to state that the company which provided the safety regulation stamp of approval and the company which put forward its new system for safety testing by the regulator,were and still are ... The IAA!

There is no separation between regulator and ANSP, contrary to Eurocontrol requirements.
Cant be too surprised that the IAA are making such claims

Thales.... think twice!
 

French engineers developing a system for ATC...... "wouldn't f... it with a stolen d...!"

Malmo (Sweden) has had problems, Dublin has had problems and now Copenhagen has severe problems. I would definately think twice before signing with Thales.

Loss of label (nothing in lost list so You better remember the callsign before impact), frozen workingpositions, problems processing flightplans, patches fixing known problems causes new problems to emerge - and I could continue!

:ugh:

Maybe I was sleeping most of the tiime, but I didn't notice/remember so many problems in South Africa with Eurocat!

Was quite nice to work with.

Doei

Anyone out there working a "Mazda" system that they actually trust and would recommend?
DogGone:ok:

As an Aussie user (ex raw radar, synthetic dispays, Siemans Watchman , paper strips etc etc), I think its fine (once one gets used to 'feeding the beast').

The failures in Ireland are a concern, something wrong with implementation and acceptance one assumes.

The implementation 'glitch' which APP controllers LUV...when one has confirmed that the fan speed is 'max' and all the faeces that may exist locally is heading for those blades!!!

Once the bugs are killed my Irish friends, its not bad kit.

Our system in Oz had a few issues to start with, but we,ve been using it for over 8 years now and are quite comfortable with it. Being computer based it seems to do 99 similar actions right, has a wobble at a 100 and then keeps going. I think we've just got used to it.
Any jobs still going in Ireland?

This data is from 2006 or earlier, so my memory might not
be too accurate. In Finland the MTCD did not work properly
enough, since the conflict detection is not based on strips anymore.
That was the major fault that I recall. The MTCD function should be
working perfectly since the fallback for that is the "eyeballing" only.

The other point is the user interface. 6 different windows to modify or enter data. AND 6 different user interfaces...
Seems as if there were 6 totally different design teams that did not pass
any information to each other about the logic (or lack of) in the other user interfaces.

In Finland the version that I remember was quite stable, and the fall back
systems that were designed seemed not to need to be used often. (By spring 2006).
I do not have any info about fault logs, so this is my personal experience.

Max1-Plenty of jobs still going here,plenty of room,got some aussie accented controllers here too at the mo so come on up..if the price is right!

The products you speak about are essentially different so opinions and reports of the Oz system versus the Irish system do stand a balanced comparison

The EUROCAT-E product was intended for use within Europe, (e.g. Ireland, Croatia, etc) in areas with high traffic density and significant radar coverage. It was designed to a Eurocontrol specification by engineers. It’s complicated.

The EUROCAT-X product, (e.g Australia, South Africa, etc.) was intended for use in areas with or without radar coverage. The principal control functions are based upon the use of Flight Plan data associated to radar and/or ADS/CPDLC data. It was designed with ATC operational input. It’s intuitive and flexible.

Belgium will open it's brand new Eurocat-E system next april (if all goes well), and we've been working on the dataset for a few months now. Controller training has started and so far most people seem to be happy with the system.

We've found some bugs in the system though, which will hopefully be resolved by the time it goes live. It's also VERY complex, compared to our current Thomson system, but I suppose it's just a matter of time and training...

we are not crazy to take multimilion ATM software from Thales. We use combination of FDPS and RDPS from two different companies and it works without major flaws for years. The stability of FDPS is outstanding - not a single stop since FSO....

Yes, when your ACC area of responsibility is similar to mine TMA.
Most of the traffic just passing by with some of them having no enough time to contact you.

can you please elaborate what difference does it make if my FIR is smaller than your TMA? have you seen our system? do you know its capabilities? I've seen Eurocat in operation and I can tell you our system has more or less all Eurocat has. (minus the mindboggling menus and endless acronyms....)

yeah I think Raytheon systems are much more stable.Evaluated both Thales & raytheon systems as both the versions are working in this country. Any way both has its unique problems.

RAYTHEON RULES!
Until it breaks down. Luckily, didn't happen in Muscat lately. Frequencies in the other hand....