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

"Computer" failure?

[scott.todd]

Every time I see those words, I want to know what OS.

Re:"Computer" failure?

[drpimp]

Or could just be a software issue. "Computer Failure" is quite vague.

Re:"Computer" failure?

[Tx]

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?

[scott.todd]

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

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.

Re:"Computer" failure?

[Noah Haders]

sounds like we need a war on errorism.

Re:"Computer" failure?

[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 until the entire system was back to normal. They ended up saying it was due to faulty voltage and too high current, hence a power supply issue.

Also once years ago they managed to crash both the main computer and the backup at the same time. Statistically that should happen once every 11k years or so.

Yeah redundancy is good and it avoids service interruptions for most failures, but even the best system can fail.

restore & reboot

[sribe]

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 ;-)

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:CNN reported it was a power problem

[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?

Re:CNN reported it was a power problem

[david.emery]

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/...
"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."

Another move from North Korea?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:"Computer" failure - yes

[Skiron]

That was me. Occam's razor.

Re:"Computer" failure - MUST REBOOT!

[scott.todd]

Let me guess: Systems were down momentarily while doing a hard reboot, hence the power "outage," in an attempt to resolve an otherwise unsolvable Windows computer glitch?

not likely

[slashmydots]

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.

systemd?

[LocutusOfBorg1]

I guess they just switched to systemd. :-)

Re:Power failure to the computer

[afidel]

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 further reduce the chances of an outage at the cost of some increased complexity use different UPS vendors and different transfer switch vendors so you don't have a possible common design flaw in both paths. The whole setup would probably cost as much as shutting down Heathrow for around 10 minutes. I've got this setup minus the redundant generators and I'm just running a midsized enterprise, not a freaking critical piece of national (and international) infrastructure.

British Porn Filter

[PPH]

... probably figured that "landing an airplane" was a euphemism for one of the prohibited acts.