Sounds like we may be getting close to boarding. Hope I don't end up sitting on the tarmac for hours.
FAA System Outage - All US Flights Grounded
- Thread starter cstrunk
- Start date
If you are sitting on the tarmac, you will be fine since the planes aren't moving. I would suggest sitting in the terminal versus the tarmac though, unless you are doing one of those outside boarding jobbers, which I always thought were weird.
Southwest hacked to take the heat off and say "SEE IT COULD HAPPEN TO ANYBODY!!!"
If it's good enough for the president of the United States, it's good enough for me.
Watch those steps though, they can be tricky.
KidSilverhair
Well-Known Member
It appears this particular problem is with the computer system that provides pilots with pertinent information about airports and air navigation systems, which pilots are required to check before a flight. The FAA did make some changes to the NOTAM (Notice To Air Missions, a clunky retrofit from the earlier Notices To Airmen, because it’s not just men flying around up there) system before I retired from air traffic control in 2018 - they went more fully computerized/online with that system, which is way easier and more efficient than the old way of pulling up printed sheets of notices. But like everything in technology, it works great until it doesn’t.
I‘m also sarcastically enjoying CNN’s coloring of this as the “second aviation-related crisis” in recent weeks, as if Southwest’s complete meltdown had anything at all to do with the FAA and their systems. (Spoiler alert: it did not).
I‘m also sarcastically enjoying CNN’s coloring of this as the “second aviation-related crisis” in recent weeks, as if Southwest’s complete meltdown had anything at all to do with the FAA and their systems. (Spoiler alert: it did not).
When coming back from the Cancun airport. We were something like 3 hours behind. Finally loaded and the pilot decided to announce that we were 9th in line and it takes 3-5 minutes for each to take off. I have never heard an entire plane groan in unison before, but I have now. Pilot would have been better keeping his mouth shut.
The FORTRAN upgrade project was delayed until 2032.
I heard it keeps getting delayed because the FORTRAN programmers keep dying of old age.
KidSilverhair
Well-Known Member
I laugh, but as a former FAA employee, I laugh because it’s dangerously close to the truth.
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.
I hate being on the plane on the tarmac "jockeying".
It's like trying to get rebound position.
Nothing better than waiting in line, being next to take off, then a warning light goes off in the cockpit making you head back to the gate...
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.
As a pilot I just need to remind everyone that it is ALWAYS ATCs fault. Even @KidSilverhair would agree
