All flights departing from Paris-Orly (ORY/LFPO) and Paris Roissy-Charles de Gaulle (CDG/LFPG) airports were suspended for around 30 minutes yesterday morning. Officials confirmed a technical issue with the flight plan systems. Arrivals were not affected, but departure delays are ongoing. The French Civil Aviation Authority, Direction générale de l’Aviation Civile, confirmed that the issue with the flight plan processing system started at the flight control center in Athis Mons, close to Paris-Orly airport. Although no details have been given as to what the problem actually was, the system was up and running half an hour after initial issues were detected. According to a spokesperson, all Paris airports were affected this morning. The system was back up and running just before midday, and departures were slowly brought back to normal across all Paris airports.
Problems with the flight plans
Although the cause of the issue isn’t known, it’s likely the Integrated Initial Flight Plan Processing System (IFPS) wasn’t collecting and processing flight plans correctly. The system network validates flight plans before take-off. Every aircraft operating a flight must have a flight plan that ensures no collisions, improves efficiency, simplifies operations, and aids communication during the flight.
This could explain why arrivals were not affected as flight plans were already approved. Flight plan management is performed regionally. For the Parisian airports, this takes place at the flight control center situated to the south of Paris-Orly.
Half an hour is a long time for airports
Although the system was only problematic for 30 minutes, flights were delayed for longer as a backlog of aircraft caused a domino effect of problems for the airports. According to its website, Paris Charles de Gaulle handles over 100 aircraft movements every hour on average. During the morning peak times, this increases. With aircraft unable to depart, arriving aircraft may not find space at a gate and be forced to wait on the apron or runway. Luckily, the airport staff was able to minimize delays. Some departures were still delayed until around 15:00 local time showing over an hour to wait. However, most appear to now be on time; passengers are advised to check with airlines before traveling. Some other airports in northern and central France also show ongoing delays.
All things considered, the disruption appears to be minimal. In comparison, a software crash in 2019 caused thousands of delayed flights across the US. The software used by Southwest, United, and Delta to perform pre-flight weight calculations went down, causing massive delays. As with the issue in Paris, the system was up and running again in around 40 minutes, but the impact was felt by passengers and airlines for days.
Problems with IT systems highlight how strict airports’ schedules are and how a small error can considerably impact operations.
Story sourced from here
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