Welp, that sucks...

[Ozelot]

Every time I try to make a joke about how antiquated our software is, it turns out to be true.

funny thing is its not just the FAA, saw this stuff come across google news a little bit ago

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_t...h_is_common_at_air_force_nuclear_missile.html

 

[mshunter]

View attachment 27789

Yup, parts of our system are DOS.

WTF!

 

[genot]

Believe it or not, that picture isn't the part of the equation.

This is nothing more than proof that Airways Facilities are the most under appreciated people in the NAS.

 

[RICHARD5]

A friend is stateside IP Air Cav. All the helo pilots to and from the sand box pass through him (Papago). We'd talk of the avionic suites in those birds. Most date back to VN.

 

[Hacker15e]

Whoops! Looks like it was one of my buds who did this.....

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investi...affic-control-computers-shuts-down-lax-n95886

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ern-California-despite-flying-miles-them.html

A relic from the Cold War appears to have triggered a software glitch at a major air traffic control center in California Wednesday that led to delays and cancellations of hundreds of flights across the country, sources familiar with the incident told NBC News.

On Wednesday at about 2 p.m., according to sources, a U-2 spy plane, the same type of aircraft that flew high-altitude spy missions over Russia 50 years ago, passed through the airspace monitored by the L.A. Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale, Ca. The L.A. Center handles landings and departures at the region’s major airports, including Los Angeles International (LAX), San Diego and Las Vegas.

The computers at the L.A. Center are programmed to keep commercial airliners and other aircraft from colliding with each other. The U-2 was flying at 60,000 feet, but the computers were attempting to keep it from colliding with planes that were actually miles beneath it.

 

[Autothrust Blue]

WTF!

That's nothing to be afraid of, really, as long as it works. (There's a good amount of "don't mess with it" when it comes to these things.)

Old or weird stuff, operating system wise, is actually in a lot of life-critical or regulated (or both) computer systems.

 

[mshunter]

That's nothing to be afraid of, really, as long as it works. (There's a good amount of "don't mess with it" when it comes to these things.)

Old or weird stuff, operating system wise, is actually in a lot of life-critical or regulated (or both) computer systems.

The "WTF" is because the government has been dragging it's feet to modernize this stuff.

 

[RICHARD5]

The "WTF" is because the government has been dragging it's feet to modernize this stuff.

The flip side is buddy contracts which pretty much don't do squat except that taxpayer monies become privatized. Govt contract are very lucrative...if you can stand the BS and long payment schedules.

 

[Hacker15e]

 

[ahw01]

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investi...affic-control-computers-shuts-down-lax-n95886

 

[Pipes]

I was working one of the flights that had to divert after being given indefinite holding over Tucson. Pretty surprising that this can happen in this day and age.

 

[BEEF SUPREME]

I call B.S.

How can one aircraft at a given altitude do that to the backup system? There is a lot more to this story is my guess.

 

[ahw01]

Indefinite holding over TUS? Sounds like a nightmare

 

[fholbert]

I could never fly a U2, my package wouldn't fit into that suit.

 

[bronco21016]

I call B.S.

How can one aircraft at a given altitude do that to the backup system? There is a lot more to this story is my guess.

I agree there's a lot more to the story but I'm not surprised the software crashed. Last time I was in a tower they told me some stuff still ran Windows 95. What's more surprising than all of this is that some of the ATC systems haven't yet been compromised. At least to the public's knowledge.

 

[Ozelot]

I agree there's a lot more to the story but I'm not surprised the software crashed. Last time I was in a tower they told me some stuff still ran Windows 95. What's more surprising than all of this is that some of the ATC systems haven't yet been compromised. At least to the public's knowledge.

The software that crashed is a newly written program, we had tons of growing pains at my old center when we went live with it almost 2 years ago now. I'm surprised it lasted this long without bringing down the system.

As I mentioned before in the other thread, the flight plan for the U2 had too many elements and the ERAM system simply ran out of memory. We encountered a similar situation at my old center and the "workaround" was to make multiple flight plans for the aircraft so this wouldn't happen. ERAM has come a LONG way since the beginning, it used to simply remove a data block form a airplane if it was turned more than 30 degrees. The programmers and the FAA management (non controllers) thought..."Why would they ever need to turn someone more than 30 degrees".

 

[Minuteman]

LockMart is a prime contractor for ERAM (and the U-2 if you didn't know that you big dummy!)

Nationalize Lockeed-Martin!

 

[Cal Goat]

Just tell the U2 to stop squawking altitude?

 

[Vector4Food]

@s60 If ERAM is gonna fail in your place, make sure I'm not working that night... or actually day... my holding clearances are rusty.

 

[Hacker15e]

Just tell the U2 to stop squawking altitude?

Just to provide some perspective here, U-2s fly in the NAS using pre-assigned Mode 3 squawks that are negotiated through a USAF-FAA LOA. The code is submitted as part of the flight plan, and not assigned during the IFR clearance process. Just by the 4096 code it should be obvious to ATC what kind of aircraft it is, but also they only use a couple of specific callsigns when they fly.

Either way, in this case it was how the altitude was annotated in the system that was problematic, not the fact that the Deuce was squawking Mode C.