All London airspace closed
 

*all london airspace closed after computer failure: Eurocontrol

Doesn't look like its ALL closed?


Still aircraft coming in from the East?

https://www.public.nm.eurocontrol.in...pec/index.html

for updates I guess

Aircraft still making approaches, albeit not many now.


Think parking will be fun...

from where i sit I can see flight(s) still heading in to heathrow - what's the contingency for this sort of situation for aircraft already approaching the London holds? - where would they divert to?

some people are in for a busy afternoon/evening.

Yes, they're still packing them in at Heathrow so the airspace is not closed.

not very comprehensive:
Swanwick technical failure | NATS

BBC have also posted a direct link to eurocontrol's website.. on the front page of BBC news.

I'd advise you all to refrain from visiting it unless necessary. We don't want their site to fallover due to excess hits. - Which it probably will now.

*london airspace is open; traffic volumes restricted: Nats

hilarious reporting
 

Lovely lady on Sky has just described " A lot of planes coming in, circling over Heathrow, just waiting for more information"

flightradar24 on the screen

By 'London' do they mean the TMA or the FIR?

A good case against EASA's plan to reduce the number of ATCCs then.

listening to shannon on liveatc, it appears system reset was successful and london are starting to accept traffic again with restrictions.

Sitting in Luton.Odds for a nightstop? :{

Looks like London City may be clogged. Seen a couple of flights divert to Stansted. Logistical nightmare.

They're crediting Plane Finder on the screen. Looking at FlightRadar24, things are starting to move again, some flights departing Heathrow now.

16:10 Local... After doing some orbits in the North Sea area, there seems to be a steady stream of descending aircraft above the Thames Estuary.
Also several departures from the London airfields.
c/o Flightradar24.

Just over a year since the last major problem, which was caused by the telephone system on Saturday 07/12/2013,
But all those lovely 'journos' and media types will focus on these 2 days, rather than all the others, on each of which about 7000 aeros have moved about flawlessly.

a bit of good news:

NATS

We're on the move. A BA 747 has just departed LHR for JFK

Clearance at Heathrow reporting that they are only allowed a "trickle" of departures

Someone just told they are position 55 in the queue :uhoh:

Good work, once again, by the shop floor engineers to get things up and running so quickly. Often overlooked, they have probably had the worst of it when it comes to manpower reductions.

Glad I'm not in today... next few hours will be interesting with, I'd imagine, quite a few out-of-position flights to get back into normal :ok:rotation.

Yep. And there's squadrons of 'em gathering around the Essex area, not to mention the BA B777 following the B747.
Now Radio 5 will have to find something else to prattle on about and Simon Calder can go back to his armchair!

From BBC:

:p

CTRL+ALT+Delete should do it.;)

Thank heaven it was a simple power blip and not a cyber attack. Phew!

Loved this on the BBC website:

'Disgruntled passengers'

Posted at 17:18
Josh Rasbash, a software engineer in the aviation business, has been on a delayed flight from Edinburgh to Brussels. He said: "I've been stuck on the plane for an hour and a half. Most passengers are disgruntled.
"You have to be extremely careful with managing a flight. You can't just let them land wherever. It needs to be carefully organised and managed so we don't hit each other in the air.
"It's Ryanair so I'm not expecting much.":E

Chaos
 

Just got back in time for weekend off despite horrendous CTOT issued earlier by Brussels.
Thanks to all the UK controllers working hard to restore normality.
:D

what atc computer system does swanwick control center use?

Having listened to the BBC I was expecting carnage - sure there's lots of delays of less than 2 hours, but no cancellations at VS, very few at BA (and generally on high frequency European routes) and as for FR it looks like a drop in the ocean when compared with the Italian ATC strike. Serves me right for listening:ugh:

windows 8 has a lot to answer for

Southside Hangers (btw that should be hangars), just for your info, when airspace is declared "closed" that doesn't mean that all aircraft in said airspace will mysteriously disappear. You will of course see the traffic already co-ordinated/committed continue to operate. When the airspace is closed it basically means that the coordination of further traffic into that airspace will not be accepted until the restriction is lifted.

just meant as a question...
 

have there been any rumors of a hack attack? I wouldn't believe them, but you all are on the other side of the pond from me.

AS you all know, we had an outage at chicago center a few months ago due to someone starting a fire in the com/computer room. took weeks to fix fully, work around did help things move slowly and no collisions.

I believe it's a few of those three letter jobbies; all running in parallel to prevent complete system crashes. It's certainly not a fruit based device.

i just read in the following article that the center has been plagued with problems, cost over runs, delays in commisioning and complaints by controllers

interesting:London Hit by Air Traffic Control Computer Failure - ABC News

How will the system cope with an extra runway at Heathrow or Gatwick ?

Please! No! Anything but that!
;)

Wrong question.

How will Heathrow or Gatwick with their nice shiny new runway(s) explain that nobody really thought about increasing the system capacity so the new runway, the reason all those hotels/listed buildings were demolished, can only operate at a few aircraft an hour and those come from movements that could easily have operated from the existing runways.

Yes - it could happen.

IAN, it was the right question. The ATC system cannot cope with a new runway.

Zooker

Which is what is SUPPOSED to happen. A bit like having 40 years flawless service...one midair and they never shut up about it.

The system seems to have a bit of a weak link , and that link seems to be in the computing. What platitudes or excuses will be offered this time?

Will NATS offer compensation for the ATC induced delays?

Good luck to everyone sorting that mess out.

Not W8,but 'Jovial' apparently

UK flights chaos: Air traffic control computers using software from the 1960s - Telegraph