New Zealand Air Traffic Control Failure Likely Caused By Data Transfer Issue

Last weekend New Zealand experienced an hour-long air traffic control failure that disrupted flights, leaving five plans circling and four others unable to take off, according to Radio New Zealand.

The country's sole air traffic service provider, Airways, now says it was caused by a software glitch when flight data was unable to be transferred between systems: [Airways chief executive James Young told Morning Report] "We noticed that was not occurring as it should and as a result of that our air traffic controllers took measures to manage traffic, either by holding on the ground or in an air hold." Airways operated a modern air traffic control system that involved back up systems but Young said they were not instantaneous and it took time to validate flight information data.

"At no point did we lose control of all aircraft. We were able to communicate with all aircraft and we had line of sight of all aircraft," Young said. He said flights in the New Zealand air space were held, put into a hold with two eventually continuing on and three returning to origin... "What we couldn't do was process any changes to the flight path during the period of the outage, which lasted for about one hour."
Thanks to Slashdot reader twosat for sharing the news.

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[drainbramage]

Here in washington the governer sign a rent control law so the rent can only go up 10 pct at the end of the lease.
At least on the next term of the lease they can get that free rent Plus 10 pct of the old free rent.
Step 3: Profit!

“ leaving five plans circling”

[VaccinesCauseAdults]

Were they flight plans?

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[Tablizer]

Isn't there a default "holding pattern" if bleep happens? I think they talk among themselves to each pick a unique altitude level, and then circle there and wait for further instruction. When the problem clears, the jets with the least fuel land first (or land if just plain run out).

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[ls671]

Ah the old commit/rollback principle. Indeed such system should ideally support that.

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[VaccinesCauseAdults]

I was actually just highlighting the typo: “plans” instead of “planes”.

graph nodes and interconnects

[will4]

Did a linear (geometric?) increase in the number of nodes and connections in the nodes of the graph of data and systems at the infrastructure, corporate, and safety systems lead to more failures?

Adding links to the chain connecting things, making things more complicated has diminishing returns, right?

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[Megane]

This is a job for Silent E! Because he can turn a plan into a plane!

No backup processes?

[Tomahawk]

Tech ALWAYS fails.

Why wasn't there a backup procedure? Or, if it exists, why wasn't it implemented?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFS

Airways operated a modern air traffic control system that involved back up systems but Young said they were not instantaneous and it took time to validate flight information data.

Re:

[fluffernutter]

So it's a backup but what they really need is an instantaneous DR and they don't have that.

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[Tablizer]

Tech ALWAYS fails.

It's why the Amish and Taliban will rule Earth after WW3 (if any humans survive).

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[Entrope]

They did use the backup procedure. There was inconvenience but no one was hurt, and avoiding harm is the primary objective of the primary and fallback procedures.

Then stop transferring data, simple!

[Tablizer]

...See, I have the best mind ever, everyone says so!

policy change

[ThePhish]

this is why "Read Only Fridays" should be expanded thru the weekend

Razor sharp technical analysis :o

[Mirnotoriety]

> New Zealand Air Traffic Control Failure Likely Caused By Data Transfer Issue

Couldn't they have made the explanation less technical /s

Put simply...

[zkiwi34]

Ummm, we completely buggered things up. No one really had any idea. Eventually, somebody worked it out. Good on you mate.