Computer Error Grounds Japanese Flights

zephiros writes "Mainichi Daily News reports that a "computer glitch" in Tokyo air traffic control systems resulted in the cancellation of 203 flights this weekend. At 7am Saturday, the error "caused the names of airlines and flight numbers to disappear from radar screens." A Japan Times article suggests the problem may be related to upgrades on a system which exchanges flight plans with the Defense Agency. Makes one wonder about the integration and maintenance risks of systems like CAPPS II."

Comments

Risk Maintentance 101

[gostats]

I've work quite a bit with risk maintenance. Most often situations like these increase the budget for disaster prevetion and other related expenses. This failure *should* make fewer failures in the future and generally a safer airport. But then again that all depends on how much passion they have for their job.

Maybe I should take a trip to Japan in a few months.

some glitch

[LuxFX]

If this was an error in the code, then how were they able to repair it in just 54 minutes? That's a pretty narrow window when it comes to rounding up the programmers, searching through the source, then repairing, testing, redistributing to the entire system, and rebooting the whole thing.

Kind of like how Hugh Jackman can hack into the DoD from a computer he's never touched before in Swordfish.

I'm tempted to think that this was much more human error than a bonefide "computer glitch". Maybe that 54 minutes was the time it took to call in their expert, have him look at the system, and declare "Why, you must have hit F11, which toggles the flight information. Just hit it again and it comes back."