Whiteboards used after Gatwick flight information screens fail
1–10 of 117 posts
Re: Whiteboards used after Gatwick flight information screens fail
#2My first thought was that the whiteboards themselves failed, that this was some kind of The Onion article, but it isn't.
It's simply that the backup plan to the failing digital boards, are plain whiteboards.
Re: Whiteboards used after Gatwick flight information screens fail
#3Whiteboard interviews vindicated. /s
Re: Whiteboards used after Gatwick flight information screens fail
#4I struggle a little to see how there is a single point of failure here (a fibre optic cable). I’d have thought the screens were powered by a device plugged into a LAN. Would be interested if anyone knows the architecture of such screens and why there is such a single point of failure in the whole airport.
Re: Whiteboards used after Gatwick flight information screens fail
#5I struggle a little to see how there is a single point of failure here (a fibre optic cable). I’d have thought the screens were powered by a device plugged into a LAN. Would be interested if anyone knows the architecture of such screens and why there is such a single point of failure in the whole airport.
These screens build information from multiple sources inc. airlines, ground control, and in some cases airport management. They're typically run off-site at a data center since that provides high resiliency and some data is sourced from outside the airport anyway.
If the airport has a dedicated fiber channel between their data center and airport itself and it was damaged, this could be the result. The question I'd ask is why they have no fallback strategies (e.g. cellular, VPN over a less secure internet channel, etc).
This might be an area where they can explore graceful degradation, meaning that gate information would continue to display (from airport ground control), but some flight times might be missing.
Re: Whiteboards used after Gatwick flight information screens fail
#6reminds me of the waiting room at the auto repair shop I work at. As an engine mechanic, its vital to make sure customers have access to up-to-the-minute stats on their minivan (or so im told by my boss.) Eventually someone knocked a stepladder into the screen and broke it, so we switched to whiteboard and engine techs had to scribble in status updates in front of customers like some sort of weird lecture.
Techs would mark down "NG" for no go, OK for ok, and HOLD...these all make sense to us, but not to customers. Even worse, once an hour or two a tired tech would shuffle into the waiting room study the board for a minute, and slowly cross out the name of a person. The whiteboard worked, but that day our shop was indistinguishable from a mafia den.
Re: Whiteboards used after Gatwick flight information screens fail
#7I struggle a little to see how there is a single point of failure here (a fibre optic cable). I’d have thought the screens were powered by a device plugged into a LAN. Would be interested if anyone knows the architecture of such screens and why there is such a single point of failure in the whole airport.
These screens build information from multiple sources inc. airlines, ground control, and in some cases airport management. They're typically run off-site at a data center since that provides high resiliency and some data is sourced from outside the airport anyway. If the airport has a dedicated fiber channel between their data center and airport itself and it was damaged, this could be the result. The question I'd as…
It seems so strange that they wouldn’t have a redundant link (like the various options you suggested) or at least fall back to easily available public data (flight information sites) that would at least help some.
Re: Whiteboards used after Gatwick flight information screens fail
#8[deleted]
Re: Whiteboards used after Gatwick flight information screens fail
#9My first thought was that the whiteboards themselves failed, that this was some kind of The Onion article, but it isn't. It's simply that the backup plan to the failing digital boards, are plain whiteboards.
Same. That is a really poorly worded headline.
Re: Whiteboards used after Gatwick flight information screens fail
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
These screens build information from multiple sources inc. airlines, ground control, and in some cases airport management. They're typically run off-site at a data center since that provides high resiliency and some data is sourced from outside the airport anyway. If the airport has a dedicated fiber channel between their data center and airport itself and it was damaged, this could be the result. The question I'd as…
It seems so strange that they wouldn’t have a redundant link (like the various options you suggested) or at least fall back to easily available public data (flight information sites) that would at least help some.
Perhaps they could have gone with a connectivity vendor with an extensive 4G network for backup if the (inexplicably) non-redundant fixed line was cut.