air traffic controll system goes down

What happens to air traffic control of the electricity falls? How long cana a tower run on a battery (if there are any)? I assume it has an own generator?

Yes I was directly involved in this! My Dad and I were at EDI this morning for a 07.05 departure to BHX. All was fine until a BA Captain from a flight to LGW came on the public speaker and announced to the whole departure lounge that all BA services were delayed indefinitley. Then one after another flights got cancelled, the 6am KL flight was very lucky, just getting off the ground before the grounding!
So, as this was only a day trip to the motor show, naturally we were sh!tting it!
The first LHR flight boarded at about 8am even though the current time of departure was 11am at the earliest! THis was in hope of catching an earlier slot.
Then, completely taking the ****, the first flgiht to depart since the ground ing was….a BA flight to BHX!! We could have been booked on that!!
However, in the end it worked out ok, we departed at about 08.30, about 1.5 hrs late, it could have been much worse…..
Trip report is iminent. 😀

We found at London Heathrow that airlines were still cancelling services after the problem was fixed. I know bmi cancelled at least one domestic flight after the system was up and running again.

The tactic nowadays for dealing with congestion is CTOT – Calculated Take Off Times – “slots”. Keeping aircraft on the ground instead of in holding “stacks”. It is not perfect – yet – especially when some “unnamed” countries/airports don’t play. Safety should be the same. But no point in burning fuel in the air, if you can wait on the ground.
Best regards

OK I see, your first post seemed to indicate you were flying BA and not FlyBe 🙂

Because at the time of booking a month ago or so, Flybe were cheaper and the timings were slightly better.
I couldn’t stop laughing today when they announced it, I mean the one day for this to happen is the one day I chose to have a day trip! :rolleyes:

Were you flying BA then? If the flight to BHX left why were you not on it? I don’t quite understand :S

Yes I was directly involved in this! My Dad and I were at EDI this morning for a 07.05 departure to BHX. All was fine until a BA Captain from a flight to LGW came on the public speaker and announced to the whole departure lounge that all BA services were delayed indefinitley. Then one after another flights got cancelled, the 6am KL flight was very lucky, just getting off the ground before the grounding!
So, as this was only a day trip to the motor show, naturally we were sh!tting it!
The first LHR flight boarded at about 8am even though the current time of departure was 11am at the earliest! THis was in hope of catching an earlier slot.
Then, completely taking the ****, the first flgiht to depart since the ground ing was….a BA flight to BHX!! We could have been booked on that!!
However, in the end it worked out ok, we departed at about 08.30, about 1.5 hrs late, it could have been much worse…..
Trip report is iminent. 😀

Shame, that today was the day you picked.

More like it’s a shame today picked us ! :p

Shame, that today was the day you picked, but hope you all still had a great time.
Looking forward very much to the pictures. Seems very OTT for the police to treat you like that.

Just left the guys at GLA for their delayed flight home as explained by T5, quite a frustrating day, much of the traffic was disrupted or cancelled.

Because so many BA shuttles were cancelled I had my fingers crossed they might have lumped some flights together on a 767 or 777, but even that didn’t come off.

As mentioned by Bhoy, we got a good grilling by some police dog handlers who were training their pooches in a field near the rubble mound where we were spotting. They took us to their van and made us produce ID as well as taking our names and addresses and searching our bags, citing the usual dangerous times and terrorism reasons for disrupting our spotting.

The rubble mound has had several tons of extra earth and crap placed around it thanks to building work at GLA for the new stands and T2. Most of this debris hasn’t settled yet as I demonstrated to the guys by falling down it on my a*se ! :rolleyes:

After that I drove the guys round some of my usual snapping haunts, I’m used to seeing all this stuff, but I think they liked seeing the Loganair Twotters, various propliners and a few Globespan 737’s, a change from the Heathrow traffic they’re used to.

Oh yes, cops everywhere for the departure of Prince Chuck and his bird, I suspect this may have contributed to the over zealousness of Strathclyde’s finest, never had a grilling like that before in twenty years spotting, Oh well ! 😡

I’ll post some pics later, tonight’s pub quiz night and I’m off work tomorrow 😉 Thanks to Andy for selling me his Lufthansa Star Alliance 744 model, it looks very nice on my shelf ! Thanks to Michael for not tabling a counter bid as I know he fancied it too. (lol) 😀

No, sorry I do understand what it means (I have to use it all the time!!) but I didn’t underated the context WD was using it in. I didn’t know what he meant but I do now!

OK

tnx for sayin

Brings up the task manager on my XP computer also 🙂

Michael – Look forward very much to yours, Andrews and Allens photos tomorrow 🙂

Not on a PC with Windows 2000 it doesn’t!

WD,

What is the “Ctrl-alt-delete” all about?

You must be a Apple computer user then. 🙂 Pressing the Control, Alternate and Delete buttons all at the same time with a Windows computer will reboot the system.

Standard method to reboot your computer – try it! Or in my case with Win2000 it brings up the Task manager.

The best solution to the problem 😉

WD,

What is the “Ctrl-alt-delete” all about?

As mark said, we arrived about an hour and a half late and we are currently at GLA for our 19.35hrs flight, now due for arrival at LHR at 22.15hrs.

bmi cancelled 5 domestic flights this morning to Teesside, Glasgow, Leeds etc.

Will post piccies and report tomorrow! Cya!

Ctrl-Alt-Delete

2 days running for being moved on for Andy, what an excellent run of luck 😀