Air traffic computer memory shortage behind air chaos (BBC News)

Grey Havoc

Grey Havoc

ACCESS: USAP
Senior Member
Joined
9 October 2009
Messages
19,999
Reaction score
10,540
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27374759

Air traffic chaos caused by a spy plane has been traced to a lack of computer memory, reports Reuters.

On 30 April many domestic US flights were delayed or cancelled thanks to a U-2 spy plane flying high over several south western US states.

The U-2's imprecise flight plan forced air traffic computers to work out if it was in danger of colliding with all other aircraft in the area.

The computers ran out of memory trying to calculate all possible flight paths.

At the heart of the problem was the Lockheed Martin En Route Automation Modernisation (Eram) system that models where aircraft are flying to help ensure they do not collide, said the news agency.

A spokeswoman for the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the presence of the U-2 led the Eram system to work out if it was on a crash course with lots of lower altitude flights.

The ambiguous flight plan that was filed by the U-2 also contributed to the amount of work the system had to do to ensure crashes were avoided.

All that work "used a large amount of available memory and interrupted the computer's other flight-processing functions", the spokeswoman told Reuters.

With the main computer locked up, air traffic controllers in the affected area reverted to a back-up computer system. In addition, information about flights was swapped with other air traffic control centres via phone, and aircraft were logged using paper slips.

The FAA has now updated regulations to ensure accurate flight and altitude plans are filed for similar journeys. In addition, more memory has been added to the computer system to ensure it does not suffer the same problem in the future.
Click to expand...
 
Grey Havoc said:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27374759

Air traffic chaos caused by a spy plane has been traced to a lack of computer memory, reports Reuters.

On 30 April many domestic US flights were delayed or cancelled thanks to a U-2 spy plane flying high over several south western US states.

The U-2's imprecise flight plan forced air traffic computers to work out if it was in danger of colliding with all other aircraft in the area.

The computers ran out of memory trying to calculate all possible flight paths.

At the heart of the problem was the Lockheed Martin En Route Automation Modernisation (Eram) system that models where aircraft are flying to help ensure they do not collide, said the news agency.

A spokeswoman for the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the presence of the U-2 led the Eram system to work out if it was on a crash course with lots of lower altitude flights.

The ambiguous flight plan that was filed by the U-2 also contributed to the amount of work the system had to do to ensure crashes were avoided.

All that work "used a large amount of available memory and interrupted the computer's other flight-processing functions", the spokeswoman told Reuters.

With the main computer locked up, air traffic controllers in the affected area reverted to a back-up computer system. In addition, information about flights was swapped with other air traffic control centres via phone, and aircraft were logged using paper slips.

The FAA has now updated regulations to ensure accurate flight and altitude plans are filed for similar journeys. In addition, more memory has been added to the computer system to ensure it does not suffer the same problem in the future.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

This sounds far more like poor programming/system design than anything the U-2 did. The system should have taken altitude seperation into account or allow the controllers to manually enter that data to avoid a Conflict Alert. After all, we could do this in years prior.

Looks like the U-2 is becoming a scapegoat.
 
F-14D said:
This sounds far more like poor programming/system design than anything the U-2 did. The system should have taken altitude seperation into account or allow the controllers to manually enter that data to avoid a Conflict Alert. After all, we could do this in years prior.

Looks like the U-2 is becoming a scapegoat.
Click to expand...

Exactly.
 
It's mainly a data entry issue, combined with bad error trapping. The flight plan as filed gave the U-2's altitude as "on top above FL 600" (or words to that effect) indicating that the plane was going to be above controlled airspace. As it was entered into ERAS, it just said "on top" and the system assumed "above FL 0." That triggered the much larger set of calculations that jammed up the system.

http://flightclub.jalopnik.com/so-heres-what-i-was-told-by-air-traffic-control-special-1571329826
 
TomS said:
It's mainly a data entry issue, combined with bad error trapping. The flight plan as filed gave the U-2's altitude as "on top above FL 600" (or words to that effect) indicating that the plane was going to be above controlled airspace. As it was entered into ERAS, it just said "on top" and the system assumed "above FL 0." That triggered the much larger set of calculations that jammed up the system.

http://flightclub.jalopnik.com/so-heres-what-i-was-told-by-air-traffic-control-special-1571329826
Click to expand...

Interesting article. Thanks for the reference. Looks like we have a new, modern, more advanced system that when encountering a data entry error that would have been easily dealt with in the past cascaded with all the speed of our new technology to a state where it essentially ate itself.

One wag's definition of Engineering: "The process of improving something to the point where it no longer works".
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom