Air traffic control down over UK currently

[Margoliciously]

Anyone else heard this? A national shutdown of air traffic control as system goes down.

The system is not down. A part of it that automatically uploads the flight plan data is down. That data is being uploaded manually... it takes more time to do that. Expect long delays, and many cancellations.

@huggiess

Yepppppp

They have just started handing out water they can't serve food apparently

Add to the fact that no flights left yesterday because of the 75ml winds and it is utter chaos

People were sleeping on the floor of Palma airport. It's just rubbish

We are a party of 10 with a newborn and 4 under 8 - can't even get a glass of wine to help ease the pain!!!!

Gonna bite, I think it’s a cyberhack. NATS are so cautious they would never do upgrades or anything even slightly risky at this time of year.

My DH who is pretty senior in IT reckons it’s a hack - he has no info to substantiate that, just based on what he knows about NATS IT. He said he hopes he is wrong.

Oh I feel for you ! Such a shame for the kids too as they don't really understand and are going to get so impatient. Joke you're not allowed off the plane

Just looking at East Midlands departures and nothing has taken off since 12.30

Probably a Russian cyber attack

According to this there is good traffic flow at east mids (apparently live status)

My niece is due to fly home from Naples tomorrow. Into Stansted

Am I remembering this wrong or did Air Traffic Control have an IT update that they were meant to do, but it was too expensive so they just cobbled it together and are basically still running windows 7... someone on here should know!!!

I hope this gets resolved quickly and you all get home/depart as planned.

I’m due to fly out of Birmingham airport early Friday morning. My 8 year old daughters first holiday, a much needed break after leaving an abusive relationship, my dad being diagnosed with cancer last year and my lovely stepmum being diagnosed with a stage 4 brain tumour last month. I have literally been hanging on for this holiday, the thought of our flight being cancelled is making me want to sit and absolutely sob this afternoon.

I know it’s still days away and other people are a priority right now but the longer this goes on the more chance there is of a knock on effect. I’ve scrimped so hard for this holiday, there’s no money for alternative flights if ours get cancelled. There wouldn’t even be money for a UK break. I need this holiday so badly.

I'd be slightly sceptical about that TBH, this is a problem that effects airspace nationwide, not just individual airports.

Outages aren't allows due to upgrades or patches going TU. Ever heard or orphans and zombies? Or batch jobs going wrong?

You would think they are shit hot on this kind of thing, but I supported a national critical system for the highest business you can think of, we couldn't identify and remove the source of all orphans and zombies so we rebooted daily outside of business hours to stop them. Even one tiny process not finishing nicely can eat up processing and memory fast if your talking high volumes of processing.

IT goes to shit. A lot.

No you are right. My DH is fairly senior at NATS and I've just asked him.

It is not as has been speculated a cyber attack. There is a rough flight plan in the automated system that has to be found and removed. This takes time and every time the system is rebooted it falls over again.

What a nightmare

Is anyone else surprised that 'only' 10% of all incoming and outgoing flights have been cancelled?

Independent blog says a “well placed source” says Nats have identified the problem and now working on a fix which is something.

I’m flying on wed

feel for those stuck on planes for hours happened to me last year due to atc strike. I know there is some ridiculous reason why they won’t serve food and drink, is awful. Hope you’re on your way soon or if not are allowed to get off

Currently stuck in a European country... Not had an update for 2 hours and nothing due for another hour. So we just sit and hope...!

Have to say so far everyone is chilled but we're in a fairly small airport so although not great to kill time better than being crammed in like sardines like MCR was when we flew out last week 😂

@Anon1072 who could have thought this would happen?????

Don't know tbh but it would be extremely unlikely to run a gov system on any version -2 from current release. In my experience it wouldn't be a possibility at all. Old platforms ho out of release and you can't risk getting near that. When you migrate it's mainly the data migration and jobs that go wrong. I have worked on an slight cock up on migration, but this kind of system you test it to death ( you hope!)

I don't think this can be true

@DyslexicPoster I always thought this would be the case but various parts of the NHS still run on windows 7 versions of excel so I'm willing to believe it. NATS is 49% government/ private owned I think

Very glad not cyber hack!

@StillWantingADog

I know there is some ridiculous reason why they won’t serve food and drink, is awful.

Policy depends on the airline. Some definitely do allow food/drink to be served whilst the aircraft is parked up in exceptional circumstances, with some caveats about doors/exits.

TBF it can get awkward starting cabin service if a slot delay is unknown, because you really don't want to be told by ATC "Good news, your slot is in 15 minutes, cleared to start" with the trolleys out, tray tables down and hot drinks all over the place... OTOH if the delay is known, sizeable and not likely to improve then cabin service shouldn't be an issue.

Really?? That's insane. Total madness! What the hell will they do once its out of support and there is a major virus or security hole? Migrate it in a few weeks? My mind is blown

NATS latest update is that it is fixed - although there is a backlog to get moving, obviously

Really?! That’s brilliant news!