Air traffic control 'issue'

Is this the one where the "issue" is that someone ****ed off with the equipment?

Seems like you'd be more likely to see an issue on a busier day than a quiet one? System being run up to its eyeballs and the like

Makes you think.

Until you apply logic like Mashr has.

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Yeah brilliant - my wife is stuck in Netherlands. Was supposed to be flying back this evening - earliest flight she can get home is now Wednesday morning, if it goes.

I remember saying don';t forget your laptop so you can work at your mums if anything goes wrong......*looks across to her laptop on the study table....

don't bet on there being much spare capacity over the next few days either. Seems like people may be out of pocket for all hotel etc expenses too

I am loving all the opportunist politicians jumping on the “government must do something” bandwagon.  The last thing the people sorting shit out need is to be explaining to the transport minister for two hours how it all works and what they are doing to fix it!

My daughter's flying out to a swim training camp in Spain at 06:10 from LHR. I suspect that I'll still have to get her there for 04:00 at which point she'll have to wait all day. No info on the flight, BA site says "Sorry, we are having an issue with our system at the moment, please try again later."

The last thing the people sorting shit out need is to be explaining to the transport minister for two hours how it all works

Absolutely, I work on a critical banking system and when things go horribly wrong (thankfully not often in the last 10 years) we set up 2 bridges, one for the important people actually fixing the problem and one for the senior people to talk amongst themselves.

Currently in Ibiza and due to fly back to Leeds Tuesday lunchtime.  Nothing at all on the Jet2 website about the issue and this wasn’t a package deal so not sure of the obligations for any necessary further nights away.  News reports suggest the issue is fixed but it’s going to be a backlog to clear. Ideally, not spending hours in an airport departure lounge but presumably the hotel can kick us out as per the booked duration.  Taxi booked for 9:30 in the morning but seems optimistic at the moment that the flight will leave at any sort of scheduled time.

Who flys on a BH weekend.. always goes wrong.

My daughter’s flying out to a swim training camp in Spain at 06:10 from LHR. I suspect that I’ll still have to get her there for 04:00 at which point she’ll have to wait all day. No info on the flight, BA site says “Sorry, we are having an issue with our system at the moment, please try again later.”

Similar here: I'm flying with Ryanair at 7am tomorrow, leaving my house about 5am, and wondering when I might know whether or not said flight is going.
Presumably it'll come down to whether they have an appropriate plane in the right place, and who knows about that really

Fadda jnr and I are supposed to be flying back from Geneva to Bristol tomorrow afternoon, after a disastrous (weather-wise) 4 days in Châtel.

Supposed to be back in work on Wednesday morning... 🙄

What is most annoying is that my wife tried to book a Eurostar back and whilst there was plenty of availability it was 300 E plus the fare from where she is to Utrecht and then back to Brighton on a UK train making it almost 400 E in total which is crazy when her Easyjet flight was 100 E.

BBC News has a piece about a comedian who is "stuck" in Edinburgh because his flight to London has been cancelled. He might not be able to fly til tomorrow evening. Imagine how silly he's going to feel when he finds out Edinburgh isn't on its own island surrounded by unnavigable seas!

Wasn’t supposed to be flying till Thursday but had to change flights a few weeks ago as my Mums Brain Tumour Op has been cancelled twice. So we land the morning of her op now. So can go see her in the afternoon.
Currently sat in Manchester Airport waiting for our Aircraft that left Bulgaria late and instead of 1650 departure it’s now going at 21:06.
Feel sorry for the return flight supposed to leave Rhodes at 2355 but now leaving at 0417. We’re due to arrive at 03:30 instead of 2300.
Understandable for the delay, currently watching the planes with a coffee so I’m well occupied.

@winston that seems a standard Eurostar fee for train in the next week...needs booked about 9 months in advance to get any savings...

What with one thing and another flying anywhere seems to be like a great way to get screwed over and stressed out these days, and that’s without even considering the environmental damage.

Family holiday tomorrow so hope it's sorted out by 17.00!!

@soundninja  I totally agree. I don't fly - its a decision I made more than a decade ago due to environmental issues (as I used to LOVE flying). But also, I'm not a dictator and my wife has family abroad. Having said that my wife recently quit her  job as it involved a lot of trans atlantic flights for something local.

But she just booked to see her mum in October and decided to take the train and it has cost double. We are lucky we can afford it but you can't blame people for flying when its a 3rd the cost. Got to love big oil

BBC News has a piece about a comedian who is “stuck” in Edinburgh because his flight to London has been cancelled

MCJnr finished at the Fringe on Friday and should have got the train back Saturday, but the RMT union had other ideas. The station on Sunday was apparently carnage with two days of Fringe travellers plus rugby fans...

but you can’t blame people for flying when its a 3rd the cost. Got to love big oil

I was looking at getting the train to Toulouse in October. £278 return compared to £38 return on Ryanair. 🤯

Hope anyone stuck at an airport is ok.  I m flying Wednesday, only changed it due to rail strikes on Saturday.  Picked the cheapest flight to Spain for 20 quid, just looked it up, it's now on sale for 385 quid, plus extras of course.  Good old Ryanair, never miss a chance to make money.

If there was a clearing system to surrender flights i d sell it on, I can go anytime.

To anyone stuck, flights are only top money for the next 3 days, then back to 30 quid or so.

tomorrow's front pages reporting continued impacts for days 🙄 I knew I should have booked the ferry and taken the bike...

Currently on the tarmac in Toronto waiting to finish boarding. No mention of any delays from the Air Transat, but it wouldn’t be the first time i’ve boarded a flight to be told we’re going nowhere.

Fingers crossed for everyone travelling over the next few days.

BA472 all OK on the BA flight checker when I went to bed, up at 02:30, now marked as cancelled. Not unexpected. Sadly the swim training camp is only 4 days so if the flight gets moved too many days my daughter will miss it.

My wife has been dog sitting for a week, and now for some extra days as the owners are stuck in Italy for as long as it takes!

What with one thing and another flying anywhere seems to be like a great way to get screwed over and stressed out these days, and that’s without even considering the environmental damage.

With us, every other trip seems to involve an unplanned hotel stay. The expectation hardly makes for a relaxing holiday.

BBC News has a piece about a comedian who is “stuck” in Edinburgh because his flight to London has been cancelled. He might not be able to fly til tomorrow evening. Imagine how silly he’s going to feel when he finds out Edinburgh isn’t on its own island surrounded by unnavigable seas!

I saw one yesterday about a family in the South of France and the bloke was saying that they might be delayed for 5-6 days, they both needed to be back at work and if they were delayed that long they'd need a hotel, who paid.

Do people need spoon feeding EVERYTHING - get a train(s), or hire a car FFS!

And folk expecting their airlines to know what's happening - they know barely more than the rest of us at the moment, and are also dealing with it.

leaving for east mids in an hour or so, flight still officially going.  probably be delayed but feel lucky we didnt choose our usual stansted option as thats been cancelled for today.

Do people need spoon feeding EVERYTHING – get a train(s), or hire a car FFS!

I remember a few years ago when there was flooding around Christmas time and the railway line from Bristol to Exeter blocked and there were folks at Paddington being interviewed for the TV, moaning they could not get to Devon etc etc--but why they did not just hop over to Waterloo and get the train (SWT) from there to Exeter (via Salisbury) instead presumably reflects, in part, our fragmented rail system and, I suspect, poor public knowledge of our rail network... there are always alternatives if we seek them out.

Many years ago now I was in the Algarve when that Icelandic volcano shut down air travel for a few days. We ended up getting a train to Lisbon, stayed there a few days waiting for tickets to be available on a bus to Paris, then train/ferry/train.

With us, every other trip seems to involve an unplanned hotel stay. The expectation hardly makes for a relaxing holiday.

When do you reach the tipping point where it's not worth flying for a holiday? I'm curious as to when a UK break would become more attractive?

I’m curious as to when a UK break would become more attractive?

When it doesn’t cost more for a week in the Lake District than it does for a week all-inclusive in the Med?

I’m curious as to when a UK break would become more attractive?

My main reason for travelling out of the country is snowy mountains to ski down, I don't think we have many very reliable ones of those, although I'm not sure the Alps will this year either partly at least because of those flights to get to them, I'm aware of the irony.

I’m curious as to when a UK break would become more attractive?

A UK (or Ireland) based holiday is always my preference, and we've been going to Yorkshire for family hols for a while now as it has got something for everyone 🙂 but this year my teenage daughter wanted to have a 'proper' holiday somewhere hot and sunny so we headed to Mallorca, we were fortunate in our timing--no storms, no flight probs--though we did have 45 degrees on one day... it was great, and my daughter absolutely loved it, but for me organising passports, insurance, carparking, car hire etc etc, lots of stress, it'd have been a lot easier just getting the boat over from NI to Liverpool to go to Yorkshire!

Gave up on foreign holidays years ago! Always got back more stressed with all the Travel/Airport/Delay shite.

Cottage break usually north of Scotland now 🙂

Not holidayed abroad for 5 years now - in fact don't even have a passport now, lapsed during Covid and not needed since. Like others - there's so much to see and do in the UK, I thought I'd be back to overseas again but having been 'forced' into UK breaks I'm now actually more committed to trying not to.

I get that it's hard to ski or reef dive or whatever in the UK, and if that's your thing then I guess as long as your environmental conscience allows it then it's your only option. However -

My daughter’s flying out to a swim training camp in Spain at 06:10 from LHR

I know eg: football teams go overseas for warm weather training when needed (and sponsorship obligations too, nowadays) but what? What gets done in Spain that can't be done in a pool in the UK?

I know eg: football teams go overseas for warm weather training when needed (and sponsorship obligations too, nowadays) but what? What gets done in Spain that can’t be done in a pool in the UK?

For pre qualification my wife is a swim England official and kids compete / train regularly.  She informs me that the number of 50m pools and adequate facilities for National and international level competition is woefully inadequate within the UK.  For example, the only facility to that standard for London and the Home Counties is the Stratford Olympic pool, and of course it could not accommodate all of the clubs requiring it’s time during the non competition period.

Edit: for understanding swimming an a different sized pool is different and more challenging especially for children and especially during completion.

Our 10 night (package) holiday was cancelled this morning with 2 hours notice 😔

Have booked another for Friday for 8 nights in a nicer hotel instead. Frustrating, but not the end of the world and understandable given the issues.

Do people need spoon feeding EVERYTHING – get a train(s), or hire a car FFS!

This is a bit snotty. It's the week before French schools go back and the Rugby World Cup in Paris. Most trains between eg Marseille-Paris-Calais are booked this week, take 8 hours, and cost £200 a ticket. Then there is a ferry crossing and the shitshow of expensive and unavailable tickets within the UK to wherever the people live.

One way car rentals are generally very expensive (particularly international) - and again it's the height of summer.

All this while (it sounds like) they need to be working and ignoring the possibility that someone might have special needs.

Not everyone can afford or handle a 1-3 day surface journey at zero notice. For a family of 2 adults, 2 kids, that could quite easily be thousands of pounds.

I had a nightmare week of cancelled planes earlier this year and was able to roll with the punches - but it cost me €1500 out of pocket and I'm still battling to recover some of that from insurance.

So it transpires one of my new colleagues is married to someone senior in NATS.
Apparently the trigger for the issues was basically a 'dodgy flight plan' which was submitted electronically (as is normal) which is then processed electronically/automagically.
Seems something a couple of days ago was the equivalent of some shit code in a programme or perhaps a dodgy attachment...which tripped everything up.

@kryton57

Thanks, that's interesting. I didn't quite believe you, 'knowing' we have one just up the road in Guildford but mr google has confirmed it.

Sort of - to derail the thread completely, if Mrs K57 is still available, apart from not being actually olympic sized, and maybe rules that demand it is there a major difference where a pool is 50m long but only 20m wide? Lanes don't get smaller, they just have fewer lanes (8 vs 10 lanes in a 25m wide). Is there an issue with being close to the edge (from memory the olympics have 10 lanes but only 8 swimmers??)

Fascinated.... and why if there is a big difference why so many 50x20's have been built if they're useless in anger?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long_course_swimming_pools_in_the_United_Kingdom

I flew out of LHR this morning, what was meant to be a 7.30am flight ended up leaving 45mins late & due to be back in tomorrow. It didn’t seem ‘too’ bad in T5.

Some others flew back this afternoon into London City all ok.

Hoping it should be fine by the morning.

Do people need spoon feeding EVERYTHING – get a train(s), or hire a car FFS!

This spectacularly misses the point for most people...because...

Not everyone can afford or handle a 1-3 day surface journey at zero notice.

Apparently the trigger for the issues was basically a ‘dodgy flight plan’ which was submitted electronically (as is normal) which is then processed electronically/automagically.
Seems something a couple of days ago was the equivalent of some shit code in a programme or perhaps a dodgy attachment…which tripped everything up.

I’m not saying you are incorrect but that seems a bit odd to me. I am not an expert on computers or the Swanick system but the flight plan is just information. It doesn’t change code or alter the software. I’d also be a bit surprised if after all this time someone has found a bug which could crash the whole system. I may be proved wrong…

EDIT. In fact I have been. A dodgy flight plan is what it was. Who knew?

A dodgy flight plan is what it was. Who knew?

Matt’s colleague’s husband in NATS, apparently.

@theotherjonv - Is there an issue with being close to the edge?

Yes, The 'wake' bounces back off the wall and affects the swimmer. Another issue is some pools have (maybe had, it's been a long time since I was a competitive swimmer) a diving pool attached to the main pool and this 'sucks you in' as you swim past it.

I too googled the 'true olympic sized pool' stats and was surprised to read that the UK has 19 in total and Paris alone has 20!!!

What gets done in Spain that can’t be done in a pool in the UK?

Per the previous reply, nothing except the 50m pool. If you're swimming at national level or hope to, you need experience racing and training in 50m pools instead of the normal 25m pools. Locally, there's a 50m pool at Wycombe and one at Hillingdon. Both are fully used by their clubs so the 05:30 slot is the only one available for an hour. Previous camps have been at Mount Kelly (Hogwarts transported to Tavistock) and near Pisa.

There are more 50m pools in hot places because they don't need to build a ruddy great building over the top and heat it all.

Championships have been in Sheffield Ponds Forge and London Aquatics Centre - both excellent but fully used.

Good new though - flights re-arranged for tomorrow at 14:30, muhc more civilized.

There are more 50m pools in hot places because they don’t need to build a ruddy great building over the top and heat it all.

I'm sure that's generally true but there's not a huge difference between Paris and London weather, and yet Paris seems to have more than the whole of the UK...

It's gonna be a problem with the NATS system accepting any free text/code and then throwing a fit when the text is wrong/unexpected, probably a stray comma or something..

I'd put money on it.

If it was badly formatted flight plan instructions from a French airline, as are the rumours, then the system should have simply not acceped the instruction, rather than accepted it and crashed the whole UK system.

I wouldn't want to be part of the post-mortem/lessons learned meeting for this one 🙂

See fuzz testing - chucking garbage in in a vaguely systematic way to see what happens. Best done if the people crafting the garbage already have a fair idea of what might cause the system problems.

It may be that everyone did all the right things but shit still happens sometimes.

It may be that everyone did all the right things but shit still happens sometimes.

I don't buy that for a second.

Especially when it comes to critical systems.

As it happened the 'fail safe' worked.

But unfortunately the fail safe was to shut down the entire UK airspace, as opposed to simply rejecting an erroneous flight plan.

No idea what happened at the ATC end, but all too familiar with the problems it causes.

An aircraft is given a SLOT. That’s a take off time, coordinated between departure airfield, landing airfield, enroute ATC zones, Airport Area Control zones, etc. This SLOT means that all the above have capacity at the correct time.

Capacity can be reduced by weather , staff shortages, equipment failure etc, meaning capacity can be reduced at any 1 point from say 50/hr to 10/hr. The other 40 get delayed, which also knocks on delays as in peak times, everything is near max capacity. This is called a SLOT DELAY.

Aircraft utilisation is very high in peak season. After each flight, the aircraft is straight back out again on another.

Once the aircraft has a SLOT DELAY on one flight, it will be late for the next. Then it might pick up another SLOt DELAY, which cumulatively adds up over the day.

In this case, the ATC computer that issues SLOTS and coordinates flight plans went down, so nobody knew who was allowed to take off at which time.

The backup system is manual , which is slow and manpower intensive. This reduced capacity at all uk airfields/airspace.

The only way pilots knew when they were allocated a slot was to call their Ops centre. Imagine one person suddenly getting hundreds of calls to communicate. Phone gridlock and chaos.

These delays built and built. Pilots/cabin crew have maximum duty hours by law - longer than lorry drivers, but still legal limits.

Even when flights went, pilots and aircraft then got stuck in the wrong place. This takes days to rebuild at any time, let alone in peak summer.

Every flight this time of year is full. Capacity to rebook passengers on next flights is very limited.

I hope this makes sense.

lm currently in Barcelona. The cabin crew I am flying back with tomorrow are 4 hours late in tonight,  require their legal res5 period before flight and we will be 3 hours late tomorrow before we even start. Then I am due to fly to Glasgow afterwards. There was an hour flex, but that has gone and I will be late.

Add this across hundreds/thousands of flights and you can only imagine.

Nobody would believe a critical system could be this susceptible to falling over with so little provocation - apart from those of us that have worked with critical systems in other industries... 🙄

Someone tried to plan a flight at 1300 from CDG to LHR on 'truncate table tbl_flights' airlines

Nobody would believe a critical system could be this susceptible to falling over with so little provocation – apart from those of us that have worked with critical systems in other industries…

It's all too common, tight budgets ingoring simple things... been there, got the t-shirt, and quit to preserve my sanity.

My money is on a dodgy instruction into the NATS system, and also the NATS system crashing as a result of an instruction it should have ignored by default....

So we have 2 fails here.

£100 in Greggs vouchers.

Any takers?

Someone tried to plan a flight at 1300 from CDG to LHR on ‘truncate table tbl_flights’ airlines

So a data parsing or data format error?? In which case, surely the source system should have handled it by rejecting the input??

Makes a change from the usual hardware failure, server overload or un-tested s/w upgrade....

Does Null in Bosnia have an airport.....that's  just asking for trouble...

<p style="text-align: left;">I blame the French for filling a flight plan with one of their accented letters, nobody expected our post Brexit IT system would ever have to handle them.</p>

hahah! maybe there was a special character like '€'

Computer says no, only '£'.

It was indeed a dodgy flight plan on the French side of things that crashed the system.

I blame the French for filling a flight plan with one of their accented letters, nobody expected our post Brexit IT system would ever have to handle them

Yes, but we took back control of our skies.

After being cancelled at AMS on Monday evening my wife rebooked for this morning and has been on the tarmac for an hour with an unknown amount of time to go. Excuses so far have been bad weather and staff shortages at LGW

Pilot has said it’s chaos at Gatwick and nobody appears to be gripping the situation!

So a data parsing or data format error?? In which case, surely the source system should have handled it by rejecting the input??

I can understand how this could have happened. I once wrote some code for a major telco that was involved in connecting new customers, at a time when there were thousands a day.

I had to convert from one date format to another, and if there was something very wrong with the input format (a month that wasn't 1-12) the transaction failed. Unfortunately a stray " ! " which indicated a comment meant that one instruction wasn't run and all transactions failed when you got to December.

It was fixed pretty quickly on the 1st Dec but meant there were no connections for a few hours.

I moved on from being a coder quite quickly...

Pilot has said it’s chaos at Gatwick and nobody appears to be gripping the situation!

It was like that a month ago when I was at Gatwick anyway - apparently it is pretty much default....

Imagine having an important piece of national infrastructure that someone could take down remotely, stranding thousands of people, and costing millions of quid, just by someone in a different country sending a single file with an error in it.

Surprised the Russians or Chinese didn't get there first. But I'm sure there are lots of other vulnerabilities they can exploit whenever they feel like it.

If it was badly formatted flight plan instructions from a French airline, as are the rumours, then the system should have simply not acceped the instruction, rather than accepted it and crashed the whole UK system.

Sounds like one of those text message strings that could be sent to some phones to crash/brick them remotely or in other words "black hat hacking" through a French airline with poor security by a state actor?

That makes things interesting from an IT security perspective if our ATC system can be crashed by a specific text string what else is it vulnerable to? This time we're sat on the ground waiting to leave, next time?

Hard to believe that this is the first time a flight plan has been badly formatted isn't it? Does lead to me thinking there was a bit more behind it than that, i.e. deliberate.

Is it the first time a flight plan has been badly formatted? Or just the first time one, with just the right issue, has made it past the checks that are there to protect the system? Or should we be donning our tinfoil hats?

At this point all the official pronouncements are noticeable for what they aren't saying. (Things like hacking and state actors have not been explicitly ruled out). This maybe because they aren't involved (hurrah) or it's not certain what happened (not so hurrah).

Or should we be donning our tinfoil hats?

If you already have one then up to you. I would not be surprised if it were deliberate and it may be best not to make that common knowledge at this point for a few reasons...

We seem to have been very lucky.  Left the hotel as planned on Tuesday am for the flight back from Ibiza to LBA, got to the airport and Jet2 staff were greeting customers.  From the moment leaving the hotel I feared that Jet2 were going to send the text to tell us not to go to the airport.....didn't happen.  Got to the airport in good time.  The family in front of us said they were going to Manchester, Jet2 says, "Ah, it's cancelled, you are leaving tomorrow"...We got directed straight to the check-in desk, and it's probably been one of the swiftest transits through a terminal I've ever experienced.  Indeed, so quick that the plane was boarded to early and we had to wait for our slot as they couldn't leave early.

Feel sorry for those trapped in this, more so with young 'uns.

Wife home after 2 hour delay taking off. Pilot really put her foot down on the way back - took about 40 mins runway to runway!

As for the cause, I’d be amazed if it wasn’t a threat actor that was behind this. I don’t buy the ‘comma in the wrong place on a flight plan’ explanation - especially as no further info has been forthcoming.

Pilot really put her foot down on the way back – took about 40 mins runway to runway!

Ah the old "making up time en route" line. The fact is that modern jet engines have a very narrow window of efficient operation so the pilot can't put on the afterburners to make up time. What's usually happened is that the timetabled flight duration includes an allowance for delays and sometimes those don't happen.

Though when I worked on ATC research I was heading back from Brussels with a bunch of LATCC high ups. It was a long day and we were due back at peak time but they put in a call to their colleagues and pulled a few favours - the crew were visibly surprised when the pilot called 10 mins to landing.

winston

As for the cause, I’d be amazed if it wasn’t a threat actor that was behind this. I don’t buy the ‘comma in the wrong place on a flight plan’ explanation – especially as no further info has been forthcoming.

Not sure why you'd jump to that conclusion. It's perfectly plausible that accepting a malformed or otherwise incorrect flight plan has occurred due to a software bug. Testing software on any reasonably large codebase is (extremely) difficult.

Microsoft can't achieve bug free software, Google can't achieve bug free software, Apple can't achieve bug free software, Boeing can't achieve bug free software, NASA can't achieve bug free software, etc etc. It's hard.

I blame the French for filling a flight plan with one of their accented letters, nobody expected our post Brexit IT system would ever have to handle them

See, you’ve written tomorrow's Daily Wail headline.

As for the cause, I’d be amazed if it wasn’t a threat actor that was behind this

I dont know. If it had been an attack I would have expected it to stay down for considerably longer than just part of monday (unless their dr is really, really good) both to figure out how to fix and to make sure its secure.

If it was badly formatted flight plan instructions from a French airline,

Probably created using French software that had bouncy flash animations, hidden menus, dead links etc like all their freakin websites.