For those travelling to/from UK:
Air traffic control: Airlines warn of flight delays over technical fault
Apparently it’s going to cause widespread disruption.
Both EasyJet and Swiss have cancelled flights into Geneva
That will have knock on effects on returning and onward flights.
Does anything in the UK actually work any more?
Apparently they've fixed it now but it's going to be messed up for several hours to come.
And cancelled flights are rarely reinstated.
The logistics of actually doing that would be interesting. Wouldn’t the original passengers have disappeared or been rebooked? Once canceled.
Well that’s part of it. But it’s an immense puzzle involving aircraft, passengers, ground staff, flight crew, aircraft servicing and airport and airway slots - just to name a few.
Sorta like humpty dumpty. Once he’s fallen all the king’s horses and all of the king’s men ...
And also the flights and trains tomorrow are already fully booked.
I was supposed to go to the UK this evening; the earliest I could get there now is about 9pm tomorrow evening via Frankfurt and only if I fly at 3pm from Zurich. Even if that was any use to me (which it isn't, it was only supposed to be a short trip), no way am I booking onto any last flight into the UK for at least this week because there will be knock-on effects.
The airlines will have to absorb mucho dinaros in costs and will be expected to give full refunds. Meanwhile they have no recourse to sue for damages. You can’t sue his majesty.
Maybe they can, it’s actually a public-private partnership:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATS_Holdings
But I would assume there are various contractual things in place to carefully define any penalties.
As of now Expedia are offering me the best option for Zurich to London as being via Dublin on Aer Lingus arriving lunchtime on Wednesday, 27 hours total journey
ps. and it’s not me highlighting those companies as links, I guess that’s the forum advertising kicking in!
pps. the link highlighting seems to be a bit random, first time it was Expia and second it was A L*****, weird.
They’ve published the report.
https://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33…y%20Report.pdf
The flight plan was correctly filed, but the system couldn’t handle it.
My reading of it is that the system is fundamentally flawed, they knew about it and did a cost cutting Hail Mary fix that came undone, based on the following the report:
That would be the equivalent of a bank building a customer system assuming that there would only every be one Murphy of Smith customer, discovering that that assumption was wrong and then coming up with some smart rules to try and guess which customer that bank clerk and in mind when they referenced the customer.
And then doubling down on it, by closing the system down when an known issue is encountered rather than dealing with the issue.
Seems a bit harsh - the waypoint designation rules are controlled by ICAO, they should have removed the duplicates instead of all the ATC systems globally having to do some sort of heuristic processing to work out which waypoint is correct.
I'd be interested to know if the waypoints have duplicates or more than that - calculating which "B" are meant in waypoints A to B to B to C is one thing if there are only two Bs, but imagine if there are three or more, not necessarily falling on the direct line A to C, that would be tough.
I do agree that it shouldn't have completely fallen over, but then again it's the ultimate system that needs to be fail safe - they can't really say "well, it's only one flight, we'll just carry on and hope that one finds some airspace".
ICAO is not an enforcement body. It has no power to enforce it’s “recommended practices”. That’s up to the individual member states. Some governmental aviation authorities apply the RPs to the letter. Others, such as those who struggle for funding of airport body scanners, are less compliant.
It is what it is.
Why is the Uk such a recurring shitshow when it comes to the air travel industry?
Can their IT systems really be that bad? They should be regularly IT audited to try to catch such inadequacies.
Simple, because governmental bodies like NATS are only responsible to ... nobody. They get their funding mostly from the airlines who have to carry the can when things go pear shaped.
They need to be replaced by an organisation representing all stake holders, airlines, airports and consumers. The government has no role here.