[JTND] A Software Update Brought Down Air Traffic Control System

[Matatabi Report <editor@matatabi.com>]

From JapanToday:

Computer glitch affects more than 1,500 flights
Sunday, March 2, 2003 at 06:30 JST

TOKYO A computer malfunction early Saturday temporarily paralyzed
nationwide airports in Japan and affected more than 1,500
international and domestic flights and about 270,000 people although
it was restored four hours later.

(snip)

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&page=3

[a summary of how the computer troubles happened.] 

From Mainichi Shimbun(in Japanese):

The Flight Data Processing(FDP) System at Tokyo Area Control Center
was shut down after a software update to accommodate the changes that
Defense Agency made in its communication program. The FDP receives the
fright plans of the Defense Agency aircrafts via the program.  The FDP
has redundancy --two identical systems monitor each other. When one
system has trouble, the other is supposed to take over the entire
operation. However, the software update was applied to both the main
and backup systems on the early morning of Saturday and the two
systems went down at once when a statistical package that compiles the
fright records from the day before went online at 7:00am.

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport suspects that there are
some compatability problems between FDP and the statistical
package. The ministry tested the data transmission between FDP and the
Defense Agency program on a test platform, but it didn't perform a 24
hour test prior to the update. The incompatibilities with the
statistical package might have overlooked. There have been two similar
FDP troubles in the past. Each time the troubles happened after a
software update.

http://www.mainichi.co.jp/news/flash/shakai/20030302k0000m040124000c.html

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