Matt ParkerSep 6, 2023

Everyone is reporting on "Air traffic chaos caused by 'one in 15 million' event". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66723586

But the report says "This scenario had never been encountered before, with the system having previously processed more than 15 million flight plans" https://www.nats.aero/news/nats-report-into-air-traffic-control-incident-details-root-cause-and-solution-implemented/

Air traffic chaos caused by 'one in 15 million' event

The UK's air traffic control system shut itself down after software confusion over an unusual flight path.

BBC News
Show threadMatt 🔶 (LordMatt)
@standupmaths The article says the system was designed to stop when it encountered bad data. Generally bad data should be isolated and an urgent alert flagged for a human to do something. Otherwise, it looks like an easy DoS attack vector.
Sep 6, 2023 at 11:42amWeb
Show threadEddie Coldrick 💻Sep 6, 2023
@lordmatt @standupmaths This is what I thought. Surely you'd let it just flag an error, but continue doing other flight plans. Unless it is assuming that if that data is bad, all other data may be bad. Plus, they said they need to ask the manufacturer to find the error. Can the system not just tell you there was an exemption e.g. email notification, text in capitals in logs🤣 I'm sure they'll have reasonable explanations for at least some of these things, but I'm still confused!
Show threadMatt 🔶 (LordMatt)Sep 6, 2023
@eddie @standupmaths I hope they figure that out and change because now that bad actors know this is a thing...
Show threadDewi IoanSep 12, 2023
@eddie @lordmatt @standupmaths It looks like from what little they have said if a flight plan is bad then it sends it to be manually checked, the failure that happened meant all flight plans were having to be manually checked, rather than automatically, this is why it was slow not stopped, and everything already in the system was fine
I suspect a flight plan was manually checked, corrected and was still wrong and the system went into a fail safe state ...