From
http://www.forbes.com/business/newswire/2004/06/03/rtr1393847.html
or http://tinyurl.com/2v49t


"Air control outage adds to UK transport woes
Reuters, 06.03.04, 8:10 AM ET




By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON, June 3 (Reuters) - A computer failure that briefly grounded all
aircraft in Britain at the peak morning time caused airport chaos on
Thursday and raised further questions about the state of the country's
transport infrastructure. ..."

What I found interesting was this:

"... it was a link between an old control centre at West Drayton in
Middlesex and a new one at Swanwick in Hampshire that opened in 2002 -- six
years behind schedule and 230 million pounds ($421 million) over budget.

Just months after the 600-million-pound centre at Swanwick went operational,
there were reports that controllers were being plagued by 'ghost' data on
their screens making it hard to identify real aircraft. "

They went $421 million OVER budget! What the heck is wrong here? Why are
ATC systems so expensive? And with the kinds of computation and radar
capabilities we have now, why is it still so difficult to run a system
efficiently? Well over a billion dollars just to display blips on a screen
so a human can keep them separated? And even with a billion dollar system
there are outages and glitches like this! I know I'm simplifying things
here, so could someone that knows about the nuances of ATC fill me in?

In a related vain, as long as we have an expert on the line, where do you
think ATC is going in the future? How much automation is
reasonable/practical? Are any of the new technologies available or soon to
be available (GPS, ADS-B, TIS-B, etc.) as game changing as I think they will
be? What is holding back progress?

Enquiring minds want to know.

-Aviv Hod

"Aviv Hod" > wrote in message
...
> From
> http://www.forbes.com/business/newswire/2004/06/03/rtr1393847.html
> or http://tinyurl.com/2v49t
>
>
> "Air control outage adds to UK transport woes
> Reuters, 06.03.04, 8:10 AM ET
>
>
>
>
It was the computer that produces the flight strips went down about 6.30am
local 5.30Z. Stopped all outbound flights for about 2 hours in the UK with
only inbounds being handled.

Problem sorted pretty quick. I had a colleague travelling from LHR to
Scotland at about 8 am and they were only 1 hour late on arrival.

In article >, Aviv Hod wrote:
> They went $421 million OVER budget! What the heck is wrong here? Why are
> ATC systems so expensive?

It's not just ATC systems - it's pretty much most large IT systems. ATC
is nothing special in an IT project that's late and over budget.

Writing software is _hard_ and inherently complex, and it's still done
more as an art form than an engineering discipline. There is a saying,
"If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, the
first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization". It was true
20 years ago and it's still true today - for all the hardware advances,
there have been very few advances in software development.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

"S Green" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Aviv Hod" > wrote in message
> ...
> > From
> > http://www.forbes.com/business/newswire/2004/06/03/rtr1393847.html
> > or http://tinyurl.com/2v49t
> >
> >
> > "Air control outage adds to UK transport woes
> > Reuters, 06.03.04, 8:10 AM ET
> >
> >
> >
> >
> It was the computer that produces the flight strips went down about 6.30am
> local 5.30Z. Stopped all outbound flights for about 2 hours in the UK with
> only inbounds being handled.
>
> Problem sorted pretty quick. I had a colleague travelling from LHR to
> Scotland at about 8 am and they were only 1 hour late on arrival.
>
>

Well I'm glad that this was sorted out as quickly as it was - the article
mentioned that they just rebooted the machine. However, the interesting
thing to me is that this super-duper $1billion computer system is merely a
support mechanism for what seems to me like an archaic paper strip system.
They're already dependent on the computer for generating the strips, so I
don't really see why it's necessary to use strips at all. There are plenty
of examples of complex systems that lives depend on that have accordingly
been designed with enough redundancy to be trusted by themselves, without
being held back to a merely supporting role of a manual process.

The paper strip system seems to me like an inefficient throwback to a time
when it was the only way to keep things straight. But we now have the
technological infrastructure to completely change the paradigm - using any
of the RNAV technologies, datalinks, radars, and pretty sophisticated
software for collision avoidance, command and control (much of which has
come from armed forces research).

So I buy (reluctantly) that any large IT project will be expensive. But are
we forever relegated to using paper strips that are shuttled using wooden
sticks from the tower to the approach controller who in turn depends on a
telephone line to negotiate transfers to other controllers? I just find it
hard to believe that we can't introduce more automation safely. What's it
going to take?

-Aviv Hod

"Aviv Hod" > wrote in message
...
>
> Well I'm glad that this was sorted out as quickly as it was - the article
> mentioned that they just rebooted the machine. However, the interesting
> thing to me is that this super-duper $1billion computer system is merely a
> support mechanism for what seems to me like an archaic paper strip system.
> They're already dependent on the computer for generating the strips, so I
> don't really see why it's necessary to use strips at all. There are
plenty
> of examples of complex systems that lives depend on that have accordingly
> been designed with enough redundancy to be trusted by themselves, without
> being held back to a merely supporting role of a manual process.
>

Yeah, like a DC-10's hydraulic system.

The paper strips may seem archaic but once they are printed they are
reliable. I've seen screens go blank, I've never seen the print fall off a
strip.