14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that no airplane could land at Dublin airport recently, because the ATC (Air Traffic Control) could not track them. The airport had to be shut down until the problem could be identified and remedied accordingly. It was discovered that a faulty network card was the cause of the whole incident.
The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) released this statement: "Thales ATM confirmed the root cause of the hardware system malfunction as an intermittent malfunctioning network card which consequently overcame the built-in system redundancy. Thales ATM also confirmed that the cause of the malfunction was the same for previous malfunctions which had occurred since 2 June, 2008. Thales ATM stated that in ten similar Air Traffic Control Centers worldwide with over 500,000 flight hours (50 years), this is the first time an incident of this type has been reported."
At times the ATC would lose track of airplanes for periods of about ten minutes. But the problem was not new, it had been plaguing the ATC for quite some time and as a direct result, a reduced number of planes were allowed to land and take off from Dublin Airport. The straw that broke the camel's back as they say, was the moment when the ATC could no longer detect the altitude or location of incoming airplanes.
It goes without saying that all the people whose flights were postponed by about two hours were not very happy about the situation. While it has been stated that the ATC is currently capable of "generally meeting demand", further flight delays are expected to occur in the following weeks.
Since security is an issue, the IAA has decided to implement additional monitoring tools and improve the current failure recovery system. All these actions, which are meant to prevent a similar event from happening in the future, will be implemented gradually and the airport will not run at full capacity until complete tests have been made to ensure compliance.