UK air traffic control chaos made worse by remote working, review finds

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/14/review-into-uk-air-traffic-control-failure-finds-lack-of-pre-planning

by tomduncalf • 2 years ago

1 1 2 years ago

matteason• 2 years ago

"Remote working" is a little misleading here. The engineer was on call remotely because it was a public holiday; an engineer would usually be on-site during the workday. Per the report [0]:

NERL’s protocol for the availability of engineering support is based primarily upon the level of engineering work planned (particularly maintenance activities) and not on the level of demand for air traffic service provision. The NERL rostering arrangements for engineers provide for at least one Level 2 NERL engineer to be available on site during a “normal” working day. On public holidays, when maintenance is not routinely scheduled, it is common practice for staff to be available on standby at remote locations – typically at home. On these occasions, in the event of a system fault that requires Level 2 support, initial access would be via a remote connection. However, major operations, such as the full system restart required in this incident, cannot be performed remotely, and the engineer must be on site.

There is, of course, an argument that critical systems such as this should have engineers onsite at all times, but I think there's a distinction between remote working and remote on-call

[0] https://www.caa.co.uk/our-work/publications/documents/conten...

UK air traffic control chaos made worse by remote working, review finds

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