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UK Controllers Say Air Traffic System 'Not Safe'
Jack Spine writes "Air traffic control technology being implemented in one of the major transport hubs in the UK is 'not safe,' according to air traffic controllers. The electronic flight data system (EFD) being phased in at Glasgow Prestwick Airport is too slow to handle real-time inputs, and could not cope with an outage that isolated it from the main air traffic system. Controllers had to scramble to handle the situation. Good luck if you're traveling to the UK anytime soon."
I can remember when the US Air Traffic Controllers said that our ATC system was unsafe. Reagan fired them. (True, when they struck, but still...)
I made the stupid mistake of actually reading the fine article. It seems to suggest that the old system of using paper strips and flight names is faster, more reliable and has bigger capacity to handle real time input than the new one based on computers and "smart stripes". Should have waited for people to read and post comments, that way some kind soul would have posted something easier to understand.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
the new system runs Linux, but the article also says "java". no surprise that a j2ee system would turn out be a bloated, slow steaming pile of dung. Sure, efficient coding can be done in Java, but far too often too many layers of canned commercial libraries from a certain j2ee framework vendor are employed
This is an issue in a lot of places. Huffingtonpost did a story last year about the systems in the U.S. and how old they are.
You would think this is one of those places where the technology would be constantly updated, but not so.
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Am I the only who seems to notice that the old system apparently ran off ticker tape somehow? WTF! How do you even make that work? If these people have been working on such a system that long no wonder they have trouble training them to a new system, it must all be reflex by now like driving a stick shift.
I dunno, most cars in England have a manual gearbox and are the preferred way to drive over here...
Some US naval tactical systems also reverted from digital because it was too slow.
They're not talking about "ticker tape" or punchcards. I'm no expert on ATC technology, but I recall reading an article about a fiasco in which the US FAA hired IBM (IIRC) to try to create a digital ATC system, the effort failed, and they killed the entire project after spending $1B. Apparently, the old analog method involved having a physical piece of paper for each flight that was placed on a physical representation of the flight path, and somehow the paper helped them avoid collisions.
I can't blame a language or runtime for piss poor design
You can blame the choice of a language ill suited to the task.
Java may not be the best choice for a real time environment, for one thing there's the garbage collection to consider. A language that stops from time to time to perform some internal task isn't what I would choose for a time-critical system where human lives may be in danger.
http://nodejs.org/
"<I am nearly as fast on EFD as on paper>"
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
In other news, UK locksmiths say safe not an air traffic control system.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You're right on the money and it's called a Flight progress strip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_progress_strip
Tiger Blooded Bi-Winning Machine
This seems like a good place to deploy Siftables. Each block gets assigned a plane, and the controller can manipulate them manually, like the current block and strip system. Each block can be updated dynamically to indicate fuel status, etc. When one controller hands off to another, they can physically hand over the block, ensuring awareness of who has responsibility.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_progress_strip I used to supply equipment to ATC environments, and it's comforting to know that even though they have millions of $$$'s to play with, the system integrators still understand the need for redundant systems. Every place I worked in used flightstrips alongside their computerised systems and I'm suprised that there are not using them here.
It's okay, it's only Prestwick. It's hardly a 'high volume' airport. You'll only go there if you're flying Ryanair.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Yep, 70% of UK airspace and/or (depending on which center) the Northeastern Atlantic Ocean doesn't really matter.
As you're likely to be sexually assaulted by a TSA agent.
Or be exposed to child porn naked body scanners.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
You know it's funny, despite having flown all around the UK and parts of Europe, I've never once flown with Ryan Air; it's usually been Easy Jet. Ryan Air always goes to places no one gives a toss about like Ireland or Glasgow.
Can anyone comment on what exactly this system is doing? From reading TFA and googlin' around it seems like it needs to aggregate all(?) incoming/outgoing aircraft data into a readable strip that humans can then do something with? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
#define true false
The air traffic control system is neither "safe" nor "not safe". It's impossible to be completely safe and the current system is definitely better than a worse system.
What they should say is, "... is not safe enough for X." where X can equal "the amount of money we put into it", "modern standards", or "the pilots and passengers".
Prestwick is where all of the northern UK en route traffic is controlled, it's nothing to do with the aerodrome. Southern UK airspace is controlled at Swanwick in Southampton (referred to as CTC in that pprune thread). This being /., the terrible summary doesn't make that clear.
Basically what's going on here is that NATS (it used to stand for National Air Traffic Services, now it's just NATS) is trying to save a few quid by automating the job of the Air Traffic Services Assistants (ATSA). Information about flights used to be written up on paper strips for the Air Traffic Controllers, now it's put in a computer system.
Nick
What I love is the picture in TFA. I mean could they get ANY more perfect when talking about a system being too slow than to show a couple of old folks outside the airport struggling with their luggage? Hell old folks struggling with baggage should be the picture under "too damned slow" in the dictionary!
As for TFA I'd love for someone to play "follow the money" and see whose palm got greased to pick this system. From the looks of it they picked a system used for BFE middle of nowhere airports and it simply doesn't scale well, which you'd think they would have wanted to see some realtime tests with the amount of data they are cranking before signing the check. My guess is someone there got a really nice "bonus" for picking this system over the others, safety be damned.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
the people who built it failed to do their jobs correctly. if there's one thing i can't stand, it's when technology is done wrong by people who don't know what they're doing, then foistered upon others by a heavy hand of management. if the system doesn't make the controllers happy, it's wrong. they're not whiney users... the system sucks.
it also shows a picture of entirely the wrong airport - the article is talking about Glasgow Prestwick airport, the picture shows Glasgow International airport - they're about 30-odd miles apart!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K05NgDMz2r4&feature=player_embedded
I first used Java at introduction, and gave it up as a bad idea. Others are more forgiving, so now I have three projects with vendor supplied sucware(TM) written in Java. I hope someday to see one of them achieve 75% of promised capacity, and 25% of the specified MTBF. I am sure there is one good Java programmer out there, but he is nowhere near any of our projects. Give me TCL/Tk over Java any day of the week.