FAA System Outage - All US Flights Grounded

[jbhtexas]

The amount of important but ancient systems that run on essentially dead languages like FORTRAN in all sorts of important fields (transportation/logistics, banking, insurance, industrial controls, government, the military, etc.) scares me sometimes. Stuff like this is going to keep happening again and again.

Lotta public and private entities out there stuck sitting on those systems, unable to update or maintain them well and hoping they just keep working, and unable to bear the cost of completely redoing it on the fly into a more modern language/system that would be bumpy to implement but easier in the long run.

Why is FORTRAN a problem? FORTRAN is under active development; the next revision is planned for release in 2023. And it's well-suited to certain kinds of computational problems. If you have FORTRAN code, hire competent programmers, teach them the language, and maintain your code. It's not that hard. I rarely program in FORTRAN anymore, but I use a FORTRAN-based application every day, and it works just fine.

IMO, the far greater threat to computing integrity comes from the rapid application development paradigm that has seized the industry over the last 20+ years...churn out under-tested applications and enhancements to be on the bleeding edge and let your customers find the bugs. Billions of dollars of productivity lost because of this over the last two decades.

 

[Clones123]

Beat me to it, came here to post the same GIF

 

[flycy]

I'm surprised they shut down everyone for a failure of the NOTAM system. Shutting down General Aviation and special use air space temporarily while requiring airlines to be in communication with airfield management at their destinations, if necessary, would have been far more reasonable. NOTAMS used to be printed on a big board of teletype hundreds of pages long. You reviewed it and went. It might tell you that a certain GPS satellite was down, or there was mowing operations going on at your destination. That's back when there was no means of communication besides your radios to communicate. Today every passenger carrying aircraft can simply send/receive a phone call via satcom or send/receive text messages and emails.

 

[inCyteful]

Did the FORTRAN compiler take a **** on them this morning?

Someone dropped the card stack they had to compile this morning.

 

[2122]

Otherwise you could make bank, by picking up a plane load and flying them to some small airport near where they needed to be.

Yeah, and the wife can be a stewardess and squeeze into a tight fitting outfit and serve expensive liquors for top dollar $$$

 

[Clonehomer]

Yeah it's crazy to me how many essential systems still run on what's for all intents and purposes a dead language. When I was a freshman ME student 25 years ago we all had to take Fortran and the first day the professor said you'll never use this unless you go work in air traffic control or for Wall Street.

Had the same thing with CAD classes. Professor said that this software package was in the curriculum (can't remember which one it was), but the only people still using it was the DOT.

Seems like a common trend there where it's always the government that uses the ancient technology. Almost like there were kickbacks to selecting a certain system and now there's no money to join the rest of the world. But I guess it's job security for some old person that just doesn't want to retire.

 

[wxman1]

I'm surprised they shut down everyone for a failure of the NOTAM system. Shutting down General Aviation and special use air space temporarily while requiring airlines to be in communication with airfield management at their destinations, if necessary, would have been far more reasonable. NOTAMS used to be printed on a big board of teletype hundreds of pages long. You reviewed it and went. It might tell you that a certain GPS satellite was down, or there was mowing operations going on at your destination. That's back when there was no means of communication besides your radios to communicate. Today every passenger carrying aircraft can simply send/receive a phone call via satcom or send/receive text messages and emails.

Don't forget the unlit 400AGL tower six miles from the airport, Birds INVOF every airport around you etc.

 

[wxman1]

Canada's turn now...