Problems at Swanwick?
 

Like many others I'm sitting waiting for a slot this morning with some vague info of communication problems in the south Uk. Anyone shed any light on the problem?

Eurocontrol cfmu portal says phone system failure

EGTT All Sectors Due to ATC equipment (Telephone failure) Unable to change from night configuration Very High delays No improvements possible RRP' s are send out to avoid EGTT where possible

Latest update

Airspace

EGTT
All Sectors
Due to ATC equipment (Telephone failure) EGTT is unable to change from night configuration, this means working with four collapsed sectors
Technicians are working to try to solve the issue and they are giving an expected time of resolution around 1400 UTC
Delays are very high
RRP' s are send out to avoid EGTT where possible. Flight level cappings, in coordination with UK FMP, are perfomed to reduce delay for flights that can fly lower

NMOC Brussels

It means everybody has slept in.

swanwick
 

At night the number of individual sectors are reduced so as to allow one controller to work combined sectors as if they were one big sector; because the traffic loading is less at night. ie one controller will work 3 daytime sectors as one large sector at night
As day arrives the traffic levels increase & the sectors have to be split so as to be capable of handling the traffic.ie the 3 sectors are now split & are worked by 3 different ATCOS.
Apparently, the problems arose when trying to switch back to the daytime system . ie systems didn't work as they should do.

Result of an insufficiently tested system upgrade possibly?

From reading the NATS release here http://www.nats.aero/news/technical-problem-update/ it looks like the comms panels aren't permitting the sectors to be split out so they have to remain in their night time configurations, which means just 5 sectors for the whole of London area control.

Plenty of EGs today lads...

It's the cleaning lady unplugging the radar again so she can plug her Hoover in! :E

There's also some information on Eurocontrol's NOP - https://www.public.cfmu.eurocontrol....pec/index.html

Eurocontrol reporting it as a telephone panel problem which also prohibits the sectors being split, and it also says London area is only FOUR sectors currently!!

That's what happens when all the eggs are put in one basket.

Nats probs@Swannick
 

From my vantage point down here at Phuket, Thailand, the UK air traffic services appears to be the laughing stock of the world judging by the number of delayed flights/passengers?

ZH875, that basket being an Air Traffic Control Centre? Not sure ATCOs can work from home yet...

But pilots will be able someday:ok:

Have they tried turning everything off, waiting a while then turn it all back on?

Nothing to do with Scottish mil task being transferred to Swanwick last night?

Sir George and ZH
 

I agree with your comments re a "Single point of Failure" - I hope that your comments are not based in actual facts: but the public reports coming from our illustrious BBC are so vague, as to suggest that the problem is as yet not fully understood.

In a crisis (of sorts) a concise and proportionately detailed explanation would come in handy.

As I herd a spokesperson for "NATS" say that they were unable to activate the usual additional ATC control positions to accommodate the normal increase in morning demand - necessitating flow control restrictions.

I wonder if Joe Public will ever know the approximate truth.

I'm with NotanERIC, morning watch up till the wee small hours watching England getting duffed by the Aussies:=

I run my own telecomms business, dealing with large, mission-critical systems, and can't quite grasp how some kind of disaster-recovery redundancy has not kicked in. Something utterly catastrophic must have happened. But then, plans for such an event would normally be in place.

Meanwhile, I notice a few departures from Manchester heading off to Newcastle, then turning right, possibly just to get away. Emirates being one example.

Does anyone know if this is a problem with their PABX (telephone system) or with some bespoke intercom system? The devices at the workstations seen on the BBC reports appear to be for an Ericsson MD110 PABX.