Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code • Hacker News Board

Re: Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code

#11

Post by jmvoodoo » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 4:52 PM UTC

So, essentially the system has a serious denial of service flaw. I wonder how many variations of flight plans can cause different but similar errors that also force a disconnect of primary and secondary systems.

Seems "reject individual flight plan" might be a better system response than "down hard to prevent corruption"

Bad assumption that a failure to interpret a plan is a serious coding error seems to be the root cause, but hard to say for sure.

Re: Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code

#12

Post by perihelions » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 4:53 PM UTC

Original (2023) thread with 446 comments,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37461695 ("UK air traffic control meltdown (jameshaydon.github.io)")

Re: Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code

#13

Post by Jtsummers » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 4:54 PM UTC

There's been some prior discussion on this over the past year, here are a few I found (selected based on comment count, haven't re-read the discussions yet):

From the day of:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37292406 - 33 points by woodylondon on Aug 28, 2023 (23 comments)

Discussions after:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37401864 - 22 points by bigjump on Sept 6, 2023 (19 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37402766 - 24 points by orobinson on Sept 6, 2023 (20 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37430384 - 34 points by simonjgreen on Sept 8, 2023 (68 comments)

Re: Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code

#14

Post by barbazoo » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 4:54 PM UTC

jp57 wrote: post #9

FYI: nm = nautical miles, not nanometers.

Given the context, I'd say NM actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautical_mile

Re: Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code

#15

Post by steeeeeve » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 4:54 PM UTC

You know there's a software engineer somewhere that saw this as a potential problem, brought up a solution, and had that solution rejected because handling it would add 40 hours of work to a project.

Re: Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code

#16

Post by jordanb » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 4:55 PM UTC

ipunchghosts wrote: post #8

Title should be nmi

I do a lot of navigation and have never seen nautical miles abbreviated as "nmi."

Re: Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code

#17

Post by barbazoo » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 4:55 PM UTC

ipunchghosts wrote: post #8

Title should be nmi

The unit of "nm" is common among pilots but yeah technically it should be "NM".

Re: Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code

#18

Post by jp57 » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 4:55 PM UTC

barbazoo wrote: post #14

jp57 wrote: post #9

FYI: nm = nautical miles, not nanometers.

Given the context, I'd say NM actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautical_mile

I was clarifying the post title, which uses "nm".

Re: Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code

#19

Post by hobs » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 4:56 PM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #10

hobs wrote: post #7

People posting on this forum saying "ah well software's failure case isn't as bad" > This forced controllers to revert to manual processing, leading to more than 1,500 flight cancellations and delaying hundreds of services which did operate.

Zero fatalities though. You could do a lot worse for a massive air traffic control failure.

It's true, not saying they did a bad job here, just that even minor problems in your code can exacerbated into giant net effects without you even considering it.

Re: Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code

#20

Post by bilekas » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 5:03 PM UTC

Optimal_Persona wrote: post #2

Well, 3600 billionths of a meter IS kinda close...just sayin'

I was thinking the same and thinking that’s a super weird edge case to happen. I’m obviously tired.