NEWS: All UK Air Traffic Suspended Due to "Computer Failure," Service Being Restored

Britain's air traffic control system unexpectedly shut down as of 6am local time, according to reports. All airports suspended outgoing domestic & international flights. The outage affected all of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales; those areas will encounter significant delays as the day progresses.
The systems have now been restored. Delays throughout the day are expected.

Sky.com
Flights to the greater London area were been suspended and were being re-routed to alternate airports.

It is currently believd to be caused by a massive "computer failure" at the processing centre at West Drayton which feeds to the main air traffic control center in Swanwick, Hampshire.

Swanwick has had a history of computer problems since it recently came online in 2002. It's already it's had 3 breakdowns.

Manchester and Bristol Airports are back up and running. London's Heathrow, the largest Airport in Europe, is still down.

Details to follow . . .

Related News Stories:
BBC
BBC (additional info)


[Edited on 3-6-2004 by John bull 1]

This cannot be good...

wow thats crazy, do you have any idea why!?!??

I like how the BBC story says:
"but safety was not affected"

GLITCH!

Oh, pardon me..

hummm.....interesting. This is very interesting. Thanks Banshee, could this be related to terrorism?

Any news if any terrorist groups have been claiming they will attempt cyber attacks? Terrorists are so confident that they almost always announce what they will do.

Im curious as to what operating system they use. My guess... Windows :-)

They updated the software and the system seem to have crashed. As simple as that.

And no, there wasn't any MS software used and it's annoying to hear that bashing all the way. We know that many MS soft sucks but no need to bring them up in every conversation about a computer problem

What makes me wonder is that it happened how it happened. Normally new software for MCE's is used in test-systems for several months before actually going "live".

[Edited on 3-6-2004 by shoo]

Originally posted by shoo
They updated the software and the system seem to have crashed. As simple as that.

And no, there wasn't any MS software used and it's annoying to hear that bashing all the way. We know that many MS soft sucks but no need to bring them up in every conversation about a computer problem

[Edited on 3-6-2004 by shoo]

They should buy Macs.

A similar incident happened to Delta Airlines in the US recently. It was a computer glitch that IIRC, grounded most, if not all of the Delta fleet.

Originally posted by shoo
They updated the software and the system seem to have crashed. As simple as that.

Haven't the buggers heard of Testing new systems and Preventative Maintence ?

I doubt it was caused by terrorism - more like incompetance.

That case somehow reminds me of the Disclaimer I read from AvidXpress - in this I was told not to use AvidXPress(a video editing software) in mission critical environments like nuclear power plants or space ships

[Edited on 3-6-2004 by shoo]

Just a coincidence that this happened on the weekend of the Bilderberger meeting in Italy? Perhaps someone who shouldn't be was flying into Heathrow to meet with the people on the published roster of attendees.

"Hey, who approved this flight from Afghanistan?"
Computer Crash.
"What flight from Afghanistan?"