On Tuesday, the scene inside the Delhi air traffic control was no less than what you would see in a war room. All senior officers had their anxious eyes on controllers who had taken over flight handling from the automated system. After the screens blanked out repeatedly, the controllers assumed charge, remaining in their seats, some without moving for over four hours at a stretch.
It was a nightmarish experience for everyone involved. "Nothing can be scarier than a situation in which you have no information about the hundreds of aircraft around Indira Gandhi International Airport," said a senior ATC officer. "At such times, topmost in our minds is the safety — of passengers, crew, pilots and the aircraft. Every decision has to be made in fractions of second and every decision has hundreds of lives associated with it." Fortunately, there was no safety issue involved in the whole episode.
Those probing Tuesday's system failure have not ruled out the possibility of the ATC's server suffering a cyber attack. However, an officer added, "Ours is a standalone system. It cannot be hacked as is feared by some airlines."
The automation system — with around eight of its 10-year life completed — turned sluggish and flight plan data (information such as flight number, plane's origin and destination, etc) was slow to display. The problem was rectified by 8.30pm, but by then there were sequential delays that bad weather lengthened into the night.
06/10/16 Anvit Srivastava & Saurabh Sinha/The Times Of India
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It was a nightmarish experience for everyone involved. "Nothing can be scarier than a situation in which you have no information about the hundreds of aircraft around Indira Gandhi International Airport," said a senior ATC officer. "At such times, topmost in our minds is the safety — of passengers, crew, pilots and the aircraft. Every decision has to be made in fractions of second and every decision has hundreds of lives associated with it." Fortunately, there was no safety issue involved in the whole episode.
Those probing Tuesday's system failure have not ruled out the possibility of the ATC's server suffering a cyber attack. However, an officer added, "Ours is a standalone system. It cannot be hacked as is feared by some airlines."
The automation system — with around eight of its 10-year life completed — turned sluggish and flight plan data (information such as flight number, plane's origin and destination, etc) was slow to display. The problem was rectified by 8.30pm, but by then there were sequential delays that bad weather lengthened into the night.
06/10/16 Anvit Srivastava & Saurabh Sinha/The Times Of India
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