If I'm not mistaken, they will be automatically fined for the delays.

As for how will the system cope with a new runway in London/no forward planning, I suggest to take a visit to the ATC Issues forum & read the extensive thread about future London airspace projects & the design to cope with almost DOUBLE the average traffic of today :mad:

Zonoma
If as you suspect that Nats do get fined, do the airlines that may have compensated passengers see any of the fine money or does it dissappear into the goverment coffers? Im sure that the airlines will be out considerable monies for other reasons like increased fuel usage and such as well.

I am sure that NATS could fix the problem with the injection of a couple of billion dollars and a new centre. If those pesky airlines would pay more for terminal nav fees that would help.

I hate to scare you all, but the operating system used by nats is the same used by the banks for dealing with accounts, the banks are using hardware that is even older than nats and a lot less reliable, one bank has a number of main frames that are coming up to their 50th birthday.

FC.
We all paid a couple of billion more to finance the NEW centre at Swanwick. The centre that failed yesterday!

Any truth in the rumour that someone downloaded the Candy Crush Saga app and it crashed the computer? :uhoh:

My understanding NATS was a state owned operation until just over a decade ago. Swanwick was built after a lot of bickering between Bechtel and Lockheed Martin under PFI by Lockheed Martin. The software surely would have been designed when it was built in 2000?

There's government select committee minutes out there.

The software was NOT designed in the 60's.

Read the Telegraph article , not sure that the "old" software is responsible for this particular problem yesterday , ( old is generally compatible with reliable ) but even it it was , the important question should be : why did the back up system(s) failed ?
Whether the problem was electric as initially reported by some , then UPS failed, or if it was a main system, then the back up failed ,

Question for those in the know here : do you have one or 2 main system backups in London ? Or does your procedures stipulates to clear and close airspace when you are on a back up system ?

Hotel Tango thank you for your pedanticism. It maybe, of course, that I chose that spelling on purpose.


Strange that you chose not to include Heathrow Director in your little homily re airspace being closed :)

Most often "old" software is less complex and more stable than the latest and greatest..

fatmanmedia
What rubbish.

Which operating system is it?

How about naming the bank?

What make of mainframe? Do you really believe that there would be any maintenance available for machines that old?

Banks aren't moving at 8 miles a minute on minimum fuel :=

"Most software implemented in JOVIAL is mission critical, and maintenance is getting more difficult. In December 2014 it was reported that software deriving from JOVIAL code produced in the 1960s was involved in a major failure of the United Kingdom's air traffic control infrastructure, and that the agency which uses it was having to train its IT staff in JOVIAL in order to maintain this software, which is not scheduled for replacement until 2016"

Offa
That's just what someone's recently added to the Wiki entry for Jovial. It has no particular authority and I doubt whether the contributor has any more of an inside track on the problem than many people here.

What is needed is a serious level IT expert to be ready to comment on technical explanations as they come through. Any offers?

If there is a criminal behind this, will it be covered up? Where are the hardware backups and software backups?

This is a good point. Ans it's something I've run into trying to get some IT people from a Finance Department background to understand avionics and engineering s/w.

In the banking and business industry, the computer record is the object being managed. It defines reality from the point of view of the business people. In engineering, and more so in real time (avionics) systems, the software attempts to measure or model some process occurring in the real world. And it has the potential for being wrong. So systems have to be built around the idea that they can and will fail. And even if your subsystem is still up and running, the one upstream can go brain dead and start feeding yours garbage.
:8

"In the banking and business industry, the computer record is the object being managed"

They were the good old days COBOL 74 A sadly missed language. Top down design ruled.

BBC News Channel. Saturday. 1700 GMT.

Richard Deakin, CEO, NATS, says that a responsible delinquent line of code has been discovered in amongst 4 million lines of code. When asked why this line has not caused havoc before, he gave no clear answer.

When asked if he would resign, he muttered stuff about upgrading resilience.

He said that systems were back and running in 45 minutes, which is what they train for. So, that's OK, is it?

Complacency rules, OK.

Pilots are often blamed when finger trouble with auatomation goes wrong.

When this sort of thing happens which not only causes abject misery to all pax and crews, but also ends up with someone picking up the tab for a few million quid, and compromises flight safety, all that is said is " Computer says NO "

So theoretically, what kind of contingency should be provided by ATCCs ? A fully redundant and 'hot' contingency facility which can take over in a moment's notice with fully trained staff just waiting for a failure, with each of the hundreds of systems built on completely different software platforms (to mitigate against those code errors) to the main ATCC?

Second question, who pays for it?

Maybe someone should tell the EC?