Air traffic control— cyber attack?

Manchester is currently operational but flights are being delayed in and out. This is possibly due to flights supposed the be landing at Heathrow and Gatwick being diverted to Manchester and then that causing problems in its own right with capacity at Manchester airport.

Remember Heathrow and Gatwick are long haul hubs so a lot of flights for both would have been en route when the problem started. They have to land somewhere and Manchester is the next biggest option in terms of capacity and suitable runway size (a lot of our regional airports don't have big enough runways for some of these long haul aeroplanes).

So just it affecting those two airports will have a significant impact elsewhere.

It's likely that the long haul flights at Manchester will be being prioritised over the short haul for this reason.

For today? I want your contacts!

i have baked beans and water bottles bought specifically

@Vickythevan26

I used to work in aviation (most of the time as a Longhaul pilot) but hung up the headset a few years ago...

Hope your son's controller training goes OK.

To be fair, with what's going on at the moment it's a reasonable inference rather than catastrophising.

Yes that was a really weird one, I think one of the waymarks was outside of NATS airspace, but obviously was a destination for a flight coming through our airspace.

Do you work in aviation, @notimagain, I know there are some controllers on Mumsnet? My DS works in NATS HQ but due to start ATCo training soon. He has wanted to be a controller for a long time! Most of my knowledge comes from him!

As a IT person, a lot of time it's a genuine fluff up in IT..sometimes we unintentionally take the systems out overselves.

The last real UK ATC big outage from several years back got lots of people yelling cyberattack but turned out it was a real WTF/ghost in the machine job involving waypoints on a route thousands of miles apart but with duplicate names.

Never underestimate the ability of computers and related systems to find a way of....errr, stuffing up.

ETA: link to an account of the previous big system failure from 3 years ago.

https://www.flightglobal.com/ops-safety/2023/09/coincidentally-identical-waypoint-names-foxed-uk-air-traffic-control-system/

Well given that NATS have now confirmed that the problem is fixed (albeit disruption will continue for a while as planes are not in the right place), then I would believe them over something read on Internet!

A cyber attack would likely have taken the whole of NATS systems out, with absolutely no ATC, which isn’t the case.

Also, if an outbound flight leaves but can’t get back the airline have an aircraft and a crew stuck somewhere, so not only do they have to wait until that crew can fly home they don’t have the aircraft for (say) tomorrow. EasyJet, for example, have around 20 aircraft based at Bristol airport, they cannot afford to have them stranded all around Europe

YABU, yes. There is a massive problem, but it’s due to the issue with the system that’s been stated. You have no cause to jump to cyber attack. Do you usually catastrophize?

That’s more or less what DS told me! You put it better than me…

If you bothered to look at BBC news, you will see that NATS are saying it is a problem with the flight processing system,

My DS works for NATS and none of their other systems are down, and he doesn’t think all airports are affected.

All the stuff I,'ve heard from those in or formerly in the ATC business is it's not a cyber attack, it's a failure of part of the IT system that handles flight plans, specifically flight plans for aircraft departing southern UK airports...

So those flights haven't departed, that has led to shortage of ramp (parking) space at places like LHR so some of the inbound flights have had to divert.

Supposedly the problem was fixed just under an hour ago but it's going to take hours for the system to recover (as in aircraft being in the right place).

I’m with the group wondering if it was an international bad actor.

I thought exactly the same thing.

Have a look on flight radar

A lot of airports run on an absolute knife edge in terms of slot availability. And where an incident affects other airports their options to manage the situation narrow significantly.

Even a half hour stop to flights has a massive knock on impact for the rest of the service and beyond - even worse than for trains because you can pack a hell of a lot more people than usual onto trains once they're running again and alternative land routes are more available.

For flights, it's much easier for an airport and airline to manage if they spread the impacts. Logistically it's a lot easier to manage if you cancel a flight before people have left for/arrived at the airport than if they're already through security/immigration and languishing at the airport.

And often they'll know right awy that if, eg Flight9 to Budapest had to be cancelled at 10am, then flight 10 back from Budapest will also have to be cancelled because that plane won't have made it to Budapest.

First thing I thought as well. Wouldn't surprise me at all.

Sounds like its a system glitch, no indication that its a cyber attack.

My thoughts too

There is a dude at Manchester Airport currently live streaming on YouTube of all the planes coming in

Not my first thought. Surely you'd choose a time where the impact was greater, such as school holidays or a national holiday somewhere?

Israel showing FAFO?