27/05/2015 Major power failure at Belgocontrol

[AirOpinion]

Today is the first day of the runway works at Brussels... could that be relevant?

[Inquirer]

Brussels Airlines organises city tours for its stranded passengers to help them kill time, according to De Tijd and L'Echo.

http://www.tijd.be/r/t/1/id/9637999?itm ... eam_recent
http://www.lecho.be/entreprises/aviatio ... source=SIM

[loran4721]

Hi,
just came back from the airport of Zaventem, no flights arriving/departing, complete chaos. my Brusselsairlines flight was listed as ok, I checked in the lugguage and then they cancelled it, impossible to retrieve the lugguage so gridlocked is the lugguage system.

No one knows anything:
- will they restart flights today even with delays? Don't know
- will they allow today's traveller to fly tomorrow with today's ticket? Don't know

Phoen numbers of Brusselsairlines out of reach, extremely long queue (200-300 meters, maybe more) at ticket counter Brusselsairlines

[brusselsairlinesfan]

Brussels Airlines organises city tours for its stranded passengers to help them kill time, according to De Tijd.

http://www.tijd.be/r/t/1/id/9637999?itm ... eam_recent

I find it smart

[sn26567]

According to Voka, the cost of this failure to the Belgian economy is 50 million euros. To be taken from the salary of Belgocontrol people?

[jan_olieslagers]

... or the "Elia"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elia_System_Operator staff?
... or the Elia management?
... or the Belgocontrol management?
... or the company that was contracted for maintenance of the UPS units?
... or ..?

All of them will point to one (or several) of the others for a scapegoat!
That said, I am not much impressed with claims of "this traffic jam or that strike or such a disaster cost so much" - that's politics only.

[Nevihta]

To be taken from the salary of Belgocontrol people?

Yeah right, maybe we could jail their families too...
Up to which people would you like to take the salary, even the guys that work at the restaurant ?

More seriously, people are going to try to reject the responsibility to someone else, but we come again to the problems of saving money vs aviation safety...
Hopefully it was 09.45, when the morning peak was behind, but would that happen on a snowy day with aircraft in the holding patterns, or just at the departure or arrival peak, consequences could have been dramatical...

If I read well, VCS was also down, meaning that radios were inoperant, at least until backup radios were serviceable...

[Flanker2]

The military have neither the manpower nor the training nor the equipment nor the IT infrastructure to take over completely from Belgocontrol. They could operate as a plan B so that emergency services can operate with optimal security - and I'd not be surprised if they were doing that right now.

From their point of view, they might even be at an increased level of vigilance because all the world has been informed Belgian airspace is controlled less tightly than normal.

and re: Post Nevihta.

So I guess that military still have the surveillance and emergencies covered, they just don't have the system in place to do the high-volume "business as usual" operations.

There was a similar incident at Chicago Center last year:
https://www.aviation24.be/forums/viewtopic.php?t=54634

It's a shame that they don't have a facility at for instance Beauvechain that they can go to and have radar screens and radar feeds switched on before they arrive and do business as usual within an hour.
It's not the first time that the screens have gone dark in Steenokkerzeel...

[Acid-drop]

The military allowed at least 2 landings in CRL

[Pocahontas]

One Aeroflot A319 landed in EBBR when the BRU FIR was closed. Does someone know anything about this?

[Nevihta]

It's possible to make aircraft land without radar, as long as the navaids are working, but it then reduces dramatically the rate.
If the failure was only at Brussels, regions might have been able to work as they have their own radars.
you can for example make procedurals approaches that don't request any radar.

edit : apparently the towers were not concerned with the power failure

[Pocahontas]

The failure wasn't only in Brussels. BRU FIR was closed.

[Homo Aeroportus]

To be taken from the salary of Belgocontrol people?

Yeah right, maybe we could jail their families too...
Up to which people would you like to take the salary, even the guys that work at the restaurant ?

More seriously, people are going to try to reject the responsibility to someone else, but we come again to the problems of saving money vs aviation safety...
Hopefully it was 09.45, when the morning peak was behind, but would that happen on a snowy day with aircraft in the holding patterns, or just at the departure or arrival peak, consequences could have been dramatical...

If I read well, VCS was also down, meaning that radios were inoperant, at least until backup radios were serviceable...

Spot on !

Remember an evening at VLC no long ago?
As Nevihta said, just imagine this black out happening at morning peak hour. Diversions, where to? Today even AMS quickly declared unable to take more.

This being a serious incident, the BCAA should investigate thoroughly based on ICAO Annex 13, i.e. finding the root cause and not going for a man hunt.

A short cut of course exists. Politicians and Joe public can easily find the culprit by the time of this evening's news.
Hanging by tomorrow morning. Business as usual from there. Move on.


H.A.

[Nevihta]

The failure wasn't only in Brussels. BRU FIR was closed.

As said, if BRU is down you close the airspace as lot of information are going through brussels.
But the regional towers stil can work ok. VFR flights can still proceed if radios are working for example

[HQ_BRU_Lover]

Strange the unions get involved in this soap. They claim "the lack of people working in the technical department".

Guess their people went "working" in that department this morning, but to me only to put some pressure on these never ending salary- and social negotiations of their members...

[airazurxtror]

According to the Belgocontrol spokesman, a Dominique De Haene, at the 19h RTL-TVI news, the breakdown occured this morning, when they were making the monthly test of the back-up system !

[jan_olieslagers]

That's not as implausible as it may sound. When you leave things as they are, they will be all right. When one starts tinkering, unexpected and/or undesirable effects can and do occur.

Just like an aircraft is never so dangerous as just after maintenance.

[Inquirer]

Ah, the routine test phase of redundancy capacity is always thé most vulnerable moment of any operational process, because If things go wrong, all protection is lost.(think Chernobyl, for instance)
What I dont understand is why they do this frequent testing during the day hours?
No idea how busy it gets above Belgium at night, but one would expect an operational redundancy test to be conducted during the quietest moments, just in case.
Or is there some particular reason not to do it then, other than maybe the fact that its more convenient for the technical staff to do it on a 9 to 5 schedule ISO a night shift?

[jan_olieslagers]

One argument _can_ be that, IF something goes wrong, it had better happen during business hours so that every service affected will be working at normal capacity, instead of not at all or with only a person on standby duty. This will gt the best availability of the right person(s) to take corrective action, also in systems that were not considered vulnerable to this type of risk.

Then again I agree there must be moments with less traffic, at EBBR and at other aerodromes, just after noon perhaps?

[Inquirer]

I agree, depending on how reliant they are on external help in case of problems, the night may prove an inconvenient moment, but as you say, the early afternoon seems a far more appropriate time frame than the middle of the morning, at least when I go by the very different way in which the tarmac of the airport of BRU looks: fully packed in the morning vs. as good as empty in the afternoon (till the evening falls, at least).