Software Glitches Cause Airport Delays in Britain

bnoise writes "There has been air traffic delays of up to 6 hours today above UK (and this includes north atlantic flights). A BBC News article points out the reasons: a software upgrade. Another article gives more general information about the delays. Companies pin-pointed are IBM (initial development) and Lockheed Martin. If only they were using Open Source Software in the aviation industry... By the way, is there any Open Source project in the aviation sector? A search on Freshmeat gives back 5 projects."

Comments

What would they use?

[Joseph Vigneau]

If only they were using Open Source Software in the aviation industry.

Then they'd have to waste their time arguing the merits of gairport versus kairport...

Remember kids- "Open Source" apps have glitches, too...

Re:What would they use?

[crawling_chaos]

That's GNU/Airport dammit! Get it right!

So you're at 30000 feet, browsing the source

[vkg]

for the air traffic control system for the airport you're about to land at.... and you notice a bug.... or a long jump... :-)

Perhaps there are some things it's better not to know!

Re:Tell me about it! :(

[scott1853]

Ok, stop slashdotting the poor guys server. His wife is fully clothed in all the pictures.

I know what happened...

[thrillbert]

After the upgrade from Win2k to XP, someone forgot to turn off the 'Auto Update' feature. The systems last night decided to download and install the IE rollup patch and now their IE can't run the AirPorter.v1.jar.

The bright side of the story is that the air traffic controllers will no longer be able to have their AOL instant messenger open due to compatability issues, which makes sure their focus will be on the planes flying about.

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Don't piss me off or I'll write a shell script to do your job..

Re:Interesting news but...

[MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM]

Yeah right, lets see how quick Joe Sixpack in his home basement will fix an obscur air control bug of international scale. Will he Ask Slashdot in a last resort?

Open Source

[Fizzlewhiff]

If only they were using Open Source Software in the aviation industry...

Yeah, I'd like to see how quickly the Open Source community could fix the problem during the opening weekend of Episode II.

Re:Interesting news but...

[jweatherley]

Who is going to be motivated to work on software that they can probably never run themselves?

But they could install Linux on the air traffic control system, run TuxRacer in the 1337 round green screen radar display and tell slashdot all about it.