U.K. NATS Systems Failure
One thing puzzles me in the recent NATs performance critique on these Forums. As recent as yesterday there were reports of ATC flow restrictions at Heathrow due Controller absence/sickness. Gatwick have also had repeated ATC delays reported for the same reason. ( Recently Tower controllers)
During my airline career substantial resources of expensive flying staff, pilots and cabin crew, were employed to cover this, in the form of Standby duties. On my last Long Haul fleet three full flight deck crews were rostered every day to cover last minute crew shortages due sickness etc.
It appears there is no such facility available to cover these avoidable NATS delays. Surely when an ATC controller “goes sick” etc. at short notice, there should be adequate rostered controllers at home to cover these normal eventualities?
During my airline career substantial resources of expensive flying staff, pilots and cabin crew, were employed to cover this, in the form of Standby duties. On my last Long Haul fleet three full flight deck crews were rostered every day to cover last minute crew shortages due sickness etc.
It appears there is no such facility available to cover these avoidable NATS delays. Surely when an ATC controller “goes sick” etc. at short notice, there should be adequate rostered controllers at home to cover these normal eventualities?
cessnapete, 2 answers to that.
1. how many crew did/does your airline employ that are ‘interchangeable’? I’m guessing an airline could have 100-200 type rated pilots and to employ 5 extra for contingency would add 2.5-5% costs (simple maths to make a point).
An ATC unit might have 30 controllers (bigger units would have more but only valid within a smaller, sector specific group).
You can’t take a DVR sector controller and plug them in on LAKES just because there’s a shortage on that sector. It’s like asking a Boeing pilot to fill in on an Airbus for a couple of days.
If you want to add an extra 5 staff for ATC standbys that’s a 17% increase in costs.
2. One of the previous pricing control period agreements for NATS (NERL) gave the choice to airlines of bronze service with low cost and higher expected delays, silver or gold service with higher costs and lower delays.
The unanimous answer was a cheap as possible.
NATS seems to be at a stage where delays are generally very low but occasionally batched together when a headline making failure occurs.
I believe NATS handles 24% of European traffic and contributes 3.1% of delays.
1. how many crew did/does your airline employ that are ‘interchangeable’? I’m guessing an airline could have 100-200 type rated pilots and to employ 5 extra for contingency would add 2.5-5% costs (simple maths to make a point).
An ATC unit might have 30 controllers (bigger units would have more but only valid within a smaller, sector specific group).
You can’t take a DVR sector controller and plug them in on LAKES just because there’s a shortage on that sector. It’s like asking a Boeing pilot to fill in on an Airbus for a couple of days.
If you want to add an extra 5 staff for ATC standbys that’s a 17% increase in costs.
2. One of the previous pricing control period agreements for NATS (NERL) gave the choice to airlines of bronze service with low cost and higher expected delays, silver or gold service with higher costs and lower delays.
The unanimous answer was a cheap as possible.
NATS seems to be at a stage where delays are generally very low but occasionally batched together when a headline making failure occurs.
I believe NATS handles 24% of European traffic and contributes 3.1% of delays.
Last edited by Del Prado; 21st Nov 2023 at 14:58.
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You can’t take a DVR sector controller and plug them in on LAKES just because there’s a shortage on that sector. It’s like asking a Boeing pilot to fill in on an Airbus for a couple of days.
If you want to add an extra 5 staff for ATC standbys that’s a 17% increase in costs.
2. One of the previous pricing control period agreements for NATS (NERL) gave the choice to airlines of bronze service with low cost and higher expected delays, silver or gold service with higher costs and lower delays.
The unanimous answer was a cheap as possible.
.
On the second remark, same old same ; In the 90s when we set up the CFMU, one of the main discussion point was , do we build a system to cater for the peaks of for the average traffic ? Unanimous decision pushed by the airlines, to make a plan using average yearly numbers. So from the start we created a system that will cause delays during the peak demands, whether hourly . weekly, or yearly . Some have also forgotten that.
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CAA have appointed the Panel and published Terms of Reference. "Sneaked Out" might be a better term than published. Last time they had an expert in Safety Critical Systems on the panel, I'm not sure there is anybody with quite that expertise this time around.
Again, ATC Watcher is right. He knows what he is talking about.
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That's pretty disingenuous in what's turning into an Orwellian masterclass in obfuscation. The one thing that's very clear, NATS doesn't ever want to let into the public domain what really went wrong, and how they messed up.
What has happened, in the interim, is a major realisation of how serious this 'single point of failure' type incident could be in a future with 10x more aircraft, mostly drones, in the next decade, with organisations like Think now saying many more. Yet another repeat of this incident could lead to truly catastrophic outcomes, especially for all of those aircraft not 'manually handled' by controllers, and certainly not just the 700,000 delayed flights this incident caused.
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Link to the report URL
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I may have missed it but I can see nothing that explains why the Frequentis software was programmed to switch to maintenance mode under these circumstances, when automatic processing of all flight plans ceased, and not just reject the defective plan for manual investigation, whilst continuing to work normally with valid plans. If it had done this, as far as I can tell, this would have almost been a non-event. I wonder if the panel asked this question ?
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I may have missed it but I can see nothing that explains why the Frequentis software was programmed to switch to maintenance mode under these circumstances, when automatic processing of all flight plans ceased, and not just reject the defective plan for manual investigation, whilst continuing to work normally with valid plans. If it had done this, as far as I can tell, this would have almost been a non-event. I wonder if the panel asked this question ?
For me this interim report raises more additional questions than it answers which is incredibly frustrating but par for the course.
Seemingly a very strange list of external participants, almost as though they were chosen for lack of knowledge in the airline business and or IT systems or complex infrastructure projects. While external input is valuable in these situations surely at least two of the four should have some idea what all this is about but just be seperate from CAa , ie they could have found external expertise from the FAA or Eurocontrol
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Seemingly a very strange list of external participants, almost as though they were chosen for lack of knowledge in the airline business and or IT systems or complex infrastructure projects. While external input is valuable in these situations surely at least two of the four should have some idea what all this is about but just be seperate from CAa , ie they could have found external expertise from the FAA or Eurocontrol
That said the idea that they were given a technical briefing by the CAA made me chuckle as I'm not sure there is anybody in the CAA who would be recognised as expert in the field. I wonder who briefed them first.
There is much of interest that raises further questions, as the report acknowledges. Not the most serious, but VERY odd sounding is 2.23 - 8
"The password login details of the Level 2 NERL engineer could not be readily verified due to the architecture of the system"
What 'system architecture' deliberately inhibits a valid login?
Or maybe: What overall system design prevents access to a system by a nominated engineer?
"The password login details of the Level 2 NERL engineer could not be readily verified due to the architecture of the system"
What 'system architecture' deliberately inhibits a valid login?
Or maybe: What overall system design prevents access to a system by a nominated engineer?
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To avoid fraudulent admin access, some critical systems allow the login of a user in administrative mode only after another user in a lower role triggers a process which basically sets the stage as "We need an admin"..
Though the very fact that there was a process to escalate to NERL level 2 engineer SHOULD include such a step if it was necessary.