London Airport to be controlled from 80 miles distance

Yep, wouldn't be the first time a big corporation has defended their actions in the name of profit and cover up evidence of harm to life.

Michael W

Probably not as daft as it seems. Don't air traffic controllers already sit in front of screens rather than look out of the window? And aren't railways long since run from a small number of control centres? I guess if the remote system fails the problem is no different to fog, which I hope they know how to deal with already. There might even be advantages - you can have many more cameras on the ground than eyeballs and cameras can see in the dark. Much cheaper outside London and the people operating the system are less likely to get stuck in traffic on their way to work.

Anyway I don't care - you wouldn't get me up in one of those things!

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 19/05/2017 18:45:45

Hi Bill, I guessed the GA would be a well rehearsed situation but still must need a quick response to avert a potential disaster. My Fathers penultimate RAF posting was Air traffic control at West Drayton but we never really talked about the nitty gritty of his job but it did not involve landing civilian aircraft more negotiating military aircraft through busy civilian areas. He transferred to RADAR after he finished as a pilot. Brize Norton was his final posting and was involved in Concord's maiden flight. I have the thankyou letter for his assistance to Raymond Baxter during the flight.

Mike

Mmmm - BA computer systems and backup systems fail . It can't happen can it ?
BobH

In the case of London city airport there are 3 separate feeds to Swanwick ATC centre and the cameras can zoom in as opposed to picking up a pair of binos., if a close up view is required.

Ooh, trolling

BA CE finally does an interview for R4 PM program.

Straight question: "What did the power surge do to your computer system?" did NOT get a straight answer, despite several tries.

All very odd, as if they are inviting people to speculate.

Neil

Seen the case where two feeds, from two competing service providers (lets call them "A" and "B"  ) , provide redundant network links.

Both "A" and "B" subcontract (or, one subcontracts to the other) such that both sets of traffic go down the same fibre optic cable.

And, of course, a JCB takes out one cable, and both networks.

This was in the ARPAnet days, but would expect it to be the case these days, too.

:-|

Edited By John Alexander Stewart on 29/05/2017 23:41:01

In these "modern times" any CEO would be far too busy studying his salary cheque, stock options, and bonus to be bothered with such mundane things as knowing what's going on with the company.

John

The best redundancy is looking out the windows.

Last night's TV , and they were still working out who shot president Kennedy! So what hope of BA coming clean.

I heard it too. A very poor performance. I would have expected the top man to have been well briefed and, apparently, he knew nothing. I'd guess he did know and was determined not to make a bad story worse by revealing the facts.

Not only did the computer system and recovery process fail catastrophically, but BA also mishandled the stranded customers. They had no plan for them either, for which BA management deserve roasting.

Trouble is, I don't think BA are any worse than the others. They just got caught.

Trouble is when it goes wrong and it will at sometime, one human error and its a real mess and guess what? no one will be to blame.