Flights nightmare at airport
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Thursday July 10 2008
HOLIDAYMAKERS face days of disruption at Dublin Airport after the air traffic control system broke down yesterday.
The Irish Aviation Authority revealed that it was forced to shut down the €100m Thales radar system on safety grounds because of two failures, the first time in the history of the IAA it was forced to take such action.
The number of aircraft allowed to land and take off at the country's busiest airport was restricted to 24 an hour, with one aircraft landing and one taking off every five minutes. The system should allow flights to depart every 90 seconds if required, but has failed four times in the past five weeks.
The first problem occurred at 11.45am yesterday when it stopped displaying information on screen for 10 minutes, meaning controllers could not identify aircraft.
The second incident happened at 1.30pm. Departing aircraft were held on the ground and some aircraft in the air were told to maintain holding patterns after it emerged there was a problem.
This meant chaos for travellers. Aer Lingus cancelled 23 flights during the day, and most scheduled to depart after 5pm.
Just five departed last night. Ten arrivals were diverted to Shannon, Cork and Belfast. Low-cost carrier Ryanair -- which operates up to 75pc of all flights through the airport -- was also forced to make sweeping changes to its schedule. By six o'clock, all its flights were suffering slot delays of up to seven hours, which forced it to cancel all flights for the rest of the night.
It also demanded to know why there was an ongoing problem with the radar system; why the problems had been allowed to run for weeks; and when normal services would be resumed.
"The issues with radar equipment at Dublin have been known for some weeks and it is unacceptable that there is no contingency or back-up plan," head of communication Stephen McNamara said.
Shambles
"The IAA needs to explain to passenger why flights are being delayed today... This shambles is unacceptable at Ireland's main gateway airport."
Further disruptions, including cancellations and lengthy delays, are expected at the airport today, which the IAA said it expeceted to operate at 65pc of its normal flight capacity.
The IAA said information required by controllers was lost on screen yesterday, leading to the system being shut down.
"For controllers sitting in front of the aircraft screen, there's a blip for each aircraft, with other information including speed, altitude and the aircraft identity," an IAA spokeswoman said. "The blip was remaining on screen, but the information was being lost.
"The problem happened twice this morning, and four times since early June. The maximum time it was out was 30 minutes, but confidence in the system was lost. There were no safety incidents as a result."
The system is manufactured by a French company, Thales, and their engineers were in Dublin yesterday trying to solve the problem.
- Paul Melia
