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ATC Failure update
So, if you didn’t catch me on one of the interviews in the last 24 hours, I thought I’d just add my knowledge to the update that a “rogue” flight plan could have caused this. It sounds alarming, but this is a very, very rare occurrence, and normally the 4 hours worth of backup data would have given them enough time to find the plan and remove it.
Flights plans have to be filed in a specific way, and most airline plans are done in bulk uploads, which rarely cause issues. However, when you get more unusual flights, perhaps something that may be entering and re-entering UK airspace on one plan, it could cause a problem. Normally, the system would reject it, and then the flight plans staff at the ATC centre would correct the problem so that it can be accepted. However, very, very rarely, one gets accepted into the system that shouldn’t be and then causes an error state. NATS has staff there 24 hours a day to fix the issue, so normally, the travelling public would not be affected. Sadly, yesterday, the failure took a long time to identify and then solve, so they went past the 4-hour backup period.
I have been speaking to friends flying today, and my main piece of advice is perseverance. It is a very rapidly changing situation, and many who were told they could not fly for days have now managed to get a flight. The airlines’ websites are struggling with the volume of people, so if it appears broken, just keep trying, and you should get in eventually.
I mentioned Google Flights as an option for finding alternate flights. There is also Expert Flyer which has a free trial for 5 days. Expert Flyer will show all the flights available between two airports and how many seats are left in each class, which can be handy. You can also use it to see which actual seats are free. You can read more about how to use Expert Flyer here.
As I mentioned yesterday, British Airways has been using the middle seat in Club Europe, which is normally blocked, to try to get as many people home as possible. This will continue on Wednesday as well. While it is not ideal, let’s spare a thought for all the people who have been stranded for a considerable amount of time and are desperate to get back.
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Fake Booking.com message scam
I thought it was also worth mentioning a scam that came up in the TLFL Facebook group. It appears that some smaller properties in Booking.com (could be other sites, but I have not seen that), have had their messaging hacked. This results in people receiving messages from the property that appear to be within Booking.com’s system. These messages ask for money towards an unpaid booking. I actually had a legitimate request in this exact way a few weeks ago, so it is a very normal thing for properties to do. I think it would be very easy to fall for the scam, which is why I thought it worth a mention.
If you do receive such a request, I would suggest calling the property directly to confirm it is definitely from them before you hand over any money.
5 comments
After looking at what happened yesterday, I really wanted to cancel my trip to Munich today but both flights operated on time and indeed we landed in Munich early this morning and on the return we were at the gate at the scheduled arrival time. It may well have helped that the airline was Lufthansa.
I think the flights are all back to normal now other than BA using the middle seat in Club. It’s more the passengers that are still trying to get on a flight from Monday.
The article in the Mail Online which quotes you is headlined “aging computer system is to blame…”. Not clear whether these were your words or their interpretation.
Both that article and your article here suggest that the formatting of a flight plan submission could have caused the failure. If the formatting was the issue and it caused the software to become confused then the age of the system is not really relevant. It would most likely be the robustness of the coding. Vulnerable code can exist on an old or modern computing system.
If it has been known for sometime that the performance of the code was not robust when presented with flight plans with non-standard formatting then that is very serious and should have been rectified as soon as possible.
I definitely did not say it was due to an ageing system. I have always been clear what the main issue was as NATS have stated with an incorrectly formatted flight plan. That is not really relevant as you say. It is a complex issue where normally flight plans that are incorrectly formatted would be rejected and reformatted by a human before being resubmitted. For some reason it did not happen this time. However it has been stated that is was something that had not been seen before. The old adage applies that you don’t know what you don’t know. There was never any threat to safety as the back up flight plan stored info kicked in which allowed them time to try and fix it and then when it they couldn’t to revert to the manual system. These type if lengthy failures are extremely rare – once in a decade.
I was sure that they were not quoting you accurately. The reference to old systems has gone. Not sure whether the article now online is a new one or a major rewrite of the original.
Unfortunately it is risky trying to explain anything with even slight complexity to the media. They tend to get it all wrong.
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