Looks like NATS has had another major glitch. Loads of airports and stopped all departures and looks like quite a few aircraft coming in from the continent are diverting.
I swear this happened a couple of years ago…
The last one was a problem with a flight plan and a waypoint in it that crashed the system. This one is a RADAR feed outage.
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They’ve also recovered in ~1.5 hours.
That’s a pretty good recovery time!
Edit: BBC reporting the outage was actually only 20 minutes.
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Huge issues, Mrs J was affected at Lutistan - dunno if she will be able to operate her last 2 sectors…
Amazing how much chaos can be caused by only 20 minutes of outage!
I don’t think that the controllers would cope with using a “procedural” (no radar) service, it’s on old-fashioned skill that took a lot of coordination / plotting.
Our airspace structure and volume of traffic is prohibitive, far more so than any lack of skills or recency, of everything being done without RADAR. UK controllers are absolute gems and I breathe a sigh of relief every time I re-enter our airspace. The most of the rest Europe is good, too, but I can take or leave the French controllers, when they’re at work!
I’m not in any way say.ing that that UK ATC aren’t good (they are), but even if volume permitted, it would be next to impossible. The skill set has been lost - (Heathrow Approach, ABC12, requesting a QGH approach!) - even up until I retired, & I was somewhere late in the UK with a very quiet ATC environment, I’d ask the controller if they would like to run a “no compass, no gyro” approach. Most said yes - I would even do a no compass approach + PAR into Northolt if it was quiet (not very often!).
The good old days of the early 1990’s, operating across Greece (they had radar but weren’t paid to use it, so didn’t!) - “Say your DME (distance) from Milos.” Then the next few aircraft would be asked the same to work out the coordination. If you were VERY lucky, you might get a climb clearance to save some fuel. As for weather avoidance, watch out!!
I have tried to explain a Speachless QGH to visual to the cadets
Makes my brain hurt but it was fun to do back in the day!!!
Definitely preferred Hawk Radar PFLs to Hunter 1in 1s though
Guess my age
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I had to look that up! I didn’t learn much about 40s and 50s aviation; was this used in civilian aviation, like in and out of London Airport, or only in the RAF?
Commercial & RAF use. Not really viable for larger airports (took a lot of time & ATC could normally only control one approach at a time) & the use has certainly reduced to a trickle. However, it’s sometimes used for trg practice (& occasionally in anger) on smaller airports - I heard someone call for one at a small general aviation airfield a couple of yrs ago when I was conducting a visit on behalf of the CAA.