You don't know how close to the truth that is - VERY close!😁

Working with mission-critical legacy I.T. has taught me "Always give yourself a way back"....

An issue that affects a good day's operation. Screws up my lates more often than not.

Ditto. Nigel voted for it.

There have been several of these `outages` over the last few years. One would hope that there is an SLA with the people who supply and maintain the system and that any loss can be claimed? (no, I doubt that as well).
I wonder how many of these outages the UK can suffer before carriers, countries start to look at alternative ways of routing through, around UK airspace or even flying here at all?

As at 21:00 CET

UK Flights
1,699 Departed today
1,814 Landed today
242 Currently airborne
Handled yesterday 5,572

The 9020 was nothing really special, just 6 x IBM 360s linked together, however it coped - just.

In my mid-1980s tecchie days we used to joke that IBM stood for "It's being mended". ICL (if anyone remembers them) was "I can't logon".

2014 NATS Software disruption
 

https://www.caa.co.uk/media/r42hircd...port-2-0-1.pdf

14,863 "delay minutes", 353 flights (directly?) affected - will leave others to draw comparisons :oh:

Interesting to compare the effects on the about 90 departures from Palma back to the UK, leaving there after 1100 Local, when things seem to have set in. Compared by airline - of course, all airlines are treated equally by NATS ...

BA ran just 2 out of 8, both LCY flights, rest cancelled.

Easyjet ran 6 out of 18, rest cancelled.

TUI only had a few today, managed 2 out of 3.

Ryanair operated 17 out of 20.

and Jet2 managed 35 out of 37.

Now it's just FR24 data, which is often not spot on. But there is a general trend. And there were a number of significant delays, but at least things got away So why did BA seem to scrub pretty much everything (a trend seemingly repeated out of London to all over Europe ? ). Easyjet likewise. How did Jet2, biggest Palma-UK operation of the day, manage to do almost everything ? How did Ryanair manage similar ?

Ah, the usual UK convenient excuse,:) but regardless of nationality , this is an interesting comment since in Europe all flights plans are centralized and go through IFPS , checked and redistributed to the ATC centers by Eurocontrol . So if there was an initial filing error by the airline it should have been spotted at IFPS level. but assuming it was not, then every other ATC center receiving the FPL should have been affected, and if not why only the UK system .

It’s a pretty vulnerable system if it can be brought down by filing an incorrect FPL.

CFM (maintenance company) - 'Can't Fix Much'
STC (Storage Technology Corporation) - 'Short-Term Cowboys'
.. and probably many more!

ATC watcher , was the source the Daily Express as they blame the French for everything .

Having spent 40 plus years in telecoms we seem in that industry to have avoided catastrophes on thsi level but by and large are very focussed on avoiding any possible single source single mode failure that impacts a wide area . It would seem absurd that something on this scale could be triggered by an erroneous flight plan something that must happen a dozen times a day or more across Europe tjust through typos or errors. NATS has a complicated ownership structure but one must suspect the usual cheeseparing penny pinching UK management style has something to do with this having such serious impacts

PB

Back in the '70's, my Dad, who was then a senior ATCO at West Drayton, had to "ring up France" one day and tell them not to let anything take off, after a UK ATC system failure. So not a new or unique phenomenon, just very very rare.

Anybody who has attended an ATC pilot liaison day in Swanwick, cannot have failed to be impressed by our UK ATC. Working in their ATC simulator, we pilots deliberately selected incorrect headings and wrong altitudes etc, ha ha ha !,.......but all were picked up within moments. Oh....... They are actually very good these guys and gals.

Then, in a later exercise the simulator instructors failed the main ATC computer, leaving the ATC crew back to paper strips and primary radar. The way the UK ATC staff calmly coped was very impressive, and quite humbling to be honest.

My thoughts also and I recall this being predicted when NATS was privatised. Ironically some airlines own part of it, so shot in own foot comes to mind.

Love it!! Back in the 90's, my Dad, who was then an approach radar ATCO at West Drayton told me when he occasionally used to practice doing SRA's with pilots, he was certain that some crews had the ILS dialled up and followed that rather than ATC instructions! :E:E:ok:

"Incorrect flight plan" Either I'm getting de ja vu, or we've heard that excuse before?

Don't believe the incorrect flight plan malarky...seems an incredulous reason for a whole system failure. And if it was cyber, would they actually admit it?

Truth is probably much more mundane though...in my old company, the entire IT infrastructure was collapsed for a number of days after an employee tripped in the server room and landed against an emergency stop button (you could not have written it, but it was captured on CCTV). The resulting shutdown was 'dirty' and caused absolute chaos...