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Computer failure grounds UK flights

  • 03-06-2004 7:28am
    #1
    Tommy Vercetti
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,105 ✭✭✭


    Computer failure grounds flights


    All flights from UK airports have been suspended following an air traffic control computer system failure, British Airways has said.
    Several airports including Manchester, Bristol and Newcastle say no flights have been allowed to take off for more than an hour.

    The air traffic control centre at Swanwick in Hampshire is reported to have been closed.

    A BBC correspondent says no more information is expected before 1030 BST.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3772077.stm


Comments

  • #2
    Victor
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 78,474 ✭✭✭✭Victor


    http://home.eircom.net/content/unison/national/3326012?view=Eircomnet
    Air chaos after 'ageing' UK control system fails
    From:The Irish Independent
    Friday, 4th June, 2004

    FLIGHTS in and out of Irish airports were returning to normal last night after an air traffic control computer failure in England grounded planes and led to travel delays for thousands of passengers.

    The glitch at the West Drayton control centre led to major delays at airports across Ireland and Britain with some flights suspended for a number of hours.

    Flights were suspended so that controllers could prioritise aircraft in the air but safety was unaffected and the computer control system was back up and running by 7.30am.

    However, the failure led to huge backlogs as airlines tried to get delayed flights back on schedule.

    All flights to and from Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and London City Airport and continental flights through British airspace controlled by Swanwick were affected.

    But flights from Dublin to Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh - which are controlled by Scottish air traffic control - were not hit.

    Aer Lingus said that 150 of its flights between Dublin and London were hit by the computer failure, but by early afternoon delays were down to around two hours.

    The airline's very first flight from Dublin at 6.40am was delayed by three hours but it was able to get away flights to Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh which are under Scottish air traffic control.

    A spokeswoman said flights to Europe were also delayed.

    At one stage flights to Frankfurt and Malaga were delayed for three hours; to Amsterdam for two hours; and to Warsaw for two-and-a-half hours.

    Ryanair, which was also hit by flight delays, claimed that the equipment failure of the UK National Air Traffic Control (NATS) monopoly, which caused severe disruption to hundreds of thousands of passengers, was "just one symptom of a continuing saga of overpricing and inefficiency".

    The failure of the 30-year-old computer system was detected at 6am.

    Although the Nats system was up and running again within an hour, huge queues quickly built up at airport check-in desks.

    As airport staff struggled to clear the backlog of delayed flights, the part-privatised Nats explained that the failure had come after overnight tests on its computer system at its centre at West Drayton in west London.

    Although Nats has a new €900m centre at Swanwick near Southampton, both the West Drayton and Swanwick controllers rely on flight data information from the West Drayton computer system, whose software dates back to the 1970s.

    It was this system that failed in similar fashion in June 2000, leading to flight chaos even worse than that experienced yesterday.

    With flight details having to be typed out by hand during the computer shutdown, Nats chiefs insisted passenger safety had not been compromised.

    But they admitted the system needed upgrading.

    Computer experts said the West Drayton software was so old it came from a system that even some in the commuter industry had never heard of.

    They added that Nats had once said this system would not last beyond 2005 but was now expected to be in place until 2010-11.

    Experts also expressed surprise that Nats had been doing overnight tests on a system which was operational, rather than on a simulated one.

    Ryanair's head of communications, Paul Fitzsimmons, said yesterday's events overshadowed the fundamental problems at Nats, which operated one of the most expensive monopolies in Europe.

    "Nats has consistently failed to deliver on manpower commitments made in support of the extraordinary increase in prices, approved by the Government, just one year after receiving a monopoly licence to run the UK ATC system for 10 years," said Mr Fitzsimmons.

    Fergus Black


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