Shanwick ATC 'down'
 

Beeb reporting that all trans-Atlantic flights have been grounded (!) because of failures of ATC at Shannon . . .

It's Shanwick.

System down.

No anticipated improvement until late afternoon.

BBC sound optimistic. Right now we are looking at delays of at least six hours, possibly up to 12. Last message suggested ATC would not be back to normal until 1500Z.

For all the redundancy to aircraft engines and systems insisted upon by the authorities these days , I am puzzled by the lack thereof by such a critical element in the international air traffic infrastructure. Are we getting what " we" pay for ? Was this a " hardware " or a " liveware " problem ? Who is to blame ? This should be treated as critically as would any major air disaster as the consequences of a deterioration of safety , ( other than grounding all air traffic ...$$$ ) has repercussions the world over.

Well, we've filed right over the top of oceanic. Ok, any extra 25 mins flying time, but no delay....
Filing over Matik then straight over Iceland.
Good luck !

Shanwick
 

BBC keeps implying it's only UK departures. Typical attention to detail from them.

Situation improving slowly.

15 movements accepted per hour now.

Thanks for the info.
Some of us might be wondering what is the normal number of movements per hour on a Saturday morning.

Several flights are re-routing to avoid the airspace too, either going North via Iceland or South via the Azores.

Everything is fixed now. The computer had gone zero rated which meant it could not process any routings and everything had to be done manually.

It was 16 movements only, now 25, systems are stable and back to normal within the hour.

Not many delayed from LGW at all -Delta and Air Transaat have just departed and BA to Barbados taxying now--so hopefully situation is improving well!!

This really wasn't the big deal that it was made out to be !
Airspaces close every day and we get round them...literally !

The BBC really need to change their headline and opening paragraph - given that nowhere in their article does anyone from BAA, NATS or BA say that their flights are grounded, and the only mention of problems is some minor delays... But then as we all know, they're not that brilliant at reporting aviation-related news

GPS tracking of a/c over the atlantic
 

Whilst the technology exists to fit a/c with GPS tracking systems for over the ocean monitoring, the costs of a fit to each a/c is significant. For operators with large fleets we are talking hundreds of millions of pounds. There is no real payback to operators for installing this equipment especially on aging airframes. So its actually an economic argumnet not a technological argument. Here in NATS it would be great if we could decommission long range radar and use processed GPS systems to indiate the a/c position. It would be more accurate and we could get rid of the limitations of the radar systems and the anomalies that come with it such as ghosting of tracks and duplicate SSR codes.

Unfortunately the airlines have to pay at this is the wrong financial climate

All our T7's are fitted with CPDLC datalink and all our 744's are now ADS-B out equipped. All new longhaul aircraft on order will be equipped from new.

Just need evryone else to catch up and align the ARINC standards and we might be able to mitigate this sort of situation in future.

I find it interesting that the flow rate can drop to as little as 15/hr over the whole OTS. 6 tracks with 9 levels each is a lot of sky, that's one aircraft every four hours for each "tunnel": long gone into someone else's airspace. :confused:

I'd have thought you could run it quite safely by making sure that there was at least 10mins between aircraft estimates for the boundary and the speed for the crossing was the same for everyone on that track & level. Now we've all got GPS/IRS, RVSM-capable TCAS equipped aircraft (with offset), it shouldn't be too much of a safety issue? After all, the situation described above is a good day over Africa and we still fly there...

What happened to the blokes arriving for a crossing from the rest of Europe and Asia?

Some folks on here are as informed as the BBC :)

:ugh::ugh::ugh:


You're not Paul Barron are you?:suspect:

Is this humor or are you serious?

If you are serious , you need to read some documents again , you have a lot to learn about safety management .