Computer Error Grounds Flights In the UK

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.

Comments

CNN reported it was a power problem

[david.emery]

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:"Computer" failure?

[gstoddart]

Must be the OS?

All of those are valid points.

However, some of us are old enough to remember stuff like this:

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.