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United Kingdom Bug Transportation

Computer Error Grounds Flights In the UK 68

Posted by Soulskill from the tripping-over-the-power-cord dept.
Rambo Tribble writes: Reuters reports that flights from Heathrow, Gatwick, and many other airports have been shut down "due to a computer failure." The information comes from European air traffic control body Eurocontrol. No official word as yet as to the nature of the failure. "One source told the BBC the problem was caused by a computer glitch that co-ordinates the flights coming into London and puts the flights in sequence as they come into land or take off. He described it as a 'flight planning tool problem.'" Incoming flights are still being accommodated.
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Computer Error Grounds Flights In the UK More

Computer Error Grounds Flights In the UK

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  • "Computer" failure? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by scott.todd ( 2847625 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @11:45AM (#48582515)
    Every time I see those words, I want to know what OS.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by drpimp ( 900837 )
      Or could just be a software issue. "Computer Failure" is quite vague.

    • Re:"Computer" failure? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tx ( 96709 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @11:54AM (#48582653) Journal

      The Register is reporting that it's actually a power failure, apparently according to a Heathrow Airport spokesperson.

      “There is a power outage at the NATS control centre in Swanwick, which is affecting UK airspace. Flights are currently experiencing delays and we will update passengers as soon as we have more information," said a spokesman from Heathrow as the effects of the outage spread.

      You'd think that such systems would have fully redundant power supply infrastructure though, so maybe that's misinformation.

      • Re:"Computer" failure - yes (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        No, reports now are a computer failure - and the Reg now reports they run MS stuff - seems like the dodgy update that MS retracted is the smoking gun.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        You'd think that such systems would have fully redundant power supply infrastructure though, so maybe that's misinformation.

        Redundancy isn't failproof. The railroad here has complete redundancy in the signal controls, yet they had a signal blackout anyway. The actual computer worked, but the backup failed and then the redundancy controller started acting funny due to undefined inputs. They ended up making the working computer bypassing the redundancy system and restart all trains, but missing the backup computer to confirm data, they switched to a reduced train schedule (they never really explained why). That lasted for 4 days u

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AK Marc ( 707885 )
          Most redundancy in IT is done in a way with a more complex single point of failure. No redundancy is more reliable (but less resilient) than the massive over-redundancy we see in IT.

        • Railroads get real sensitive about train collisions. The signal system is very carefully designed to make sure it fails safe, which means stopping the trains. If there's no reliable backup system, they're not likely to proceed as normal. Running fewer trains means they can be further apart, mitigating the effects of a not-entirely-trusted signal system.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      Why? Because it couldn't be an application problem, or a hardware problem, or a power problem, or a network problem, or even an admin problem? Must be the OS?

      • Actually, any of your suggestions would be good if true. Anything other than "scary computers" being the cause would be nice.

      • Re:"Computer" failure? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @12:11PM (#48582907) Homepage

        Must be the OS?

        All of those are valid points.

        However, some of us are old enough to remember stuff like this [gcn.com]:

        The Navy's Smart Ship technology may not be as smart as the service contends.

        Although PCs have reduced workloads for sailors aboard the Aegis missile cruiser USS
        Yorktown, software glitches resulted in system failures and crippled ship operations,
        according to Navy officials.

        Navy brass have called the Yorktown Smart Ship pilot a success in reducing manpower,
        maintenance and costs. The Navy began running shipboard applications under Microsoft
        Windows NT so that fewer sailors would be needed to control key ship functions.

        But the Navy last fall learned a difficult lesson about automation: The very
        information technology on which the ships depend also makes them vulnerable. The Yorktown
        last September suffered a systems failure when bad data was fed into its computers during
        maneuvers off the coast of Cape Charles, Va.

        Call it a well earned cynicism.

      • If OS equals YOUR FAVORITE OS then error is non OS related. Else OS is the cause of the error.

        • More like: if your favourite OS is the _cause_ of the error then never-ending arguments will be made that the error must generally be true for all computers and for any OS.
    • who kicked the power cord out of the wall or failed to renew the license for Excel because you know, you can use Excel for any data challenge you're not willing to research. i.e., "Computer glitches" are notoriously hard to pin down and are a great diversionary tactic.
    • Windows 7 and Office 2010 according to the Register.
    • @scott.todd: "Every time I see those words, I want to know what OS.

      does it begin with the " W " word?

  • The user interface looks strangely similar to Galaxians.

  • Hope they have lots of parking space for those airplanes, because they're going to pile up fast. And they're also going to be out of circulation for who knows how long?

  • restore & reboot (Score:3)

    by sribe ( 304414 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @11:47AM (#48582549)

    Don't they know about the backups on the planes in-flight? Shouldn't they just have one do a fly-by and drop an ethernet cable to a car pacing it on the runway below? Stupid Brits, don't know how to get things done in a crunch ;-)

    • After my wife recently watched this show and I spent quite some time pointing out to her all of the nonrealistic things in the episode, it's nice to have someone else have the same observations. 8-)

  • CNN reported it was a power problem (Score:4, Interesting)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @11:51AM (#48582609)

    And anecdotally, it seems many, if not most, of the ATC failures I remember hearing about in the US have also been power problems. These are kinda hard to test, as I wrote to a friend, "The on-duty ATC controllers get irate when you 'pull the big power plug' on their shift."

    Usually failures like these are chains of events, e.g. "UPS ran out of batteries more rapidly than expected, and then we couldn't get the generators started."

    Power problems are what doomed Fukushima, too, by the way.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      According to the summary they were using a computer glitch to co-ordinate the flights. I suppose that the power problem fixed the glitch and broke flight planning?

    • Power problems are what doomed Fukushima, too, by the way.

      Oh. I was under the impression that it was a result of the widely documented/reported combination of a tsunami/earthquake (9.0).

      • Re:CNN reported it was a power problem (Score:4, Informative)

        by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @03:25PM (#48585127)

        The pumps lost power after the backup systems failed (ran out of battery, and the generators were knocked out), and that's what caused the reactors to overheat and meltdown. If power had been retained to the pumps, the major problems would have been averted.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
        "The switching stations that provided power from the three backup generators located higher on the hillside failed when the building that housed them flooded.[68] Power for control systems switched over to batteries that were designed to last about eight hours.[102] Further batteries and mobile generators were dispatched to the site. They were delayed by poor road conditions and the first arrived only at 21:00 11 March,[95][103] almost six hours after the tsunami."

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

          Those were not the only backup pumps though. They had mobile pumps (fire engines) on site, but the emergency cooling system was broken so they didn't work.

  • Another move from North Korea? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12, 2014 @11:55AM (#48582661)

    Villain Kim Jong Un makes his next move with his team of super-hackers.

  • Likely some supplier had their rates downgraded long enough that they could not deliver good quality anymore. These "savings" are always exceedingly expensive in the long run.

  • That explanation isn't likely. They have pen and paper backup solutions for simply putting planes in order for landing and takeoff. To shut down to that degree, it would have had to be something more important like radar shutting down so planes might collide.
    Or they're idiots and didn't have a backup pen and paper solution that was used for decades before computers and all staff should have been trained on.

    • Or they're idiots and didn't have a backup pen and paper solution that was used for decades before computers and all staff should have been trained on.

      I'm betting on that one. We've become dependent on computers for air traffic control and I'll bet the manual system hasn't been trained in years.

      • If it was, would you trust it? I mean, people haven't been using it during their daily routines for years, so it is definitely not at super reliable level. Sure, they should be able to do it in case of emergencies, but under normal conditions it is much safer to just ground the flights.

    • I suspect they do have a backup soloution (paper based or otherwise) but using it results in a much lower capacity than the main system. After all why would you build a new computer system if their wasn't a significant benefit to doing so?

      If you have an incident that reduces capacity significantly in a system that is close to capacity then you have to prioritise. The priority for ATC is going to be to get planes already in the air safely onto the ground before they run out of fuel. Planes on the ground can

  • systemd? (Score:3, Funny)

    by LocutusOfBorg1 ( 1549493 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @12:52PM (#48583471)
    I guess they just switched to systemd. :-)

  • Not a computer failure as such, according to my source.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by afidel ( 530433 )

      So stupid, it's not hard to achieve damn near 100% uptime on power, get feeds from two substations A and B, put each one through two UPS's and use two different sets of generators with different fuel sources as backup so you have A, A', B, and B', use a transfer switch to feed your equipment's A side supply from A with A' in reserve, and the B side supply from B' and have B in reserve (that way one of your power sources stays up without a transfer switchover even if you have a fuel problem). If you want to

  • Are your planes belong to us.

  • the problem was caused by a computer glitch that co-ordinates the flights

    It's great to see for once that a glitch has been doing something worth-while, rather than just causing problems.

    It's unfortunate, then, that this glitch has fallen-back to the errant ways of most glitches, which typically just cause trouble, without doing something useful.

    I'm not sure it is time for a 12-step program for glitches, though, because I think most glitches do not want to change.

  • Older systems did that by hand but newer systems have algorithms which guide the trajectories of aircraft on approach so they finish up in a nice sequence. Thats what it sounds like in the summary.

  • British Porn Filter (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @03:47PM (#48585325)

    ... probably figured that "landing an airplane" was a euphemism for one of the prohibited acts [independent.co.uk].

  • Looks like they are using hand me down software from the US from the 1960s written in a language called Jovial.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... [telegraph.co.uk]
    "Prof Thomas said the NAS system was written using a now defunct computer language called Jovial, meaning Nats has to train programmers in Jovial just to maintain the antiquated software."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      hand me down software from the US from the 1960s written in a language called Jovial.

      Who's laughing now?

  • When I worked on the radar system for south east England in 1977, the requirements included allowing for a madman in the computer room with an axe.

    It was supposed to fail back gradually, eventually all the way to analog passive radar.

    Whatever happened to decent requirements?

    And get off my lawn!

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