Gatwick reduced to anarchy by 'computer glitch'

A "computer glitch" at Gatwick airport which lead to the clocks not going back on Sunday morning led to travel "chaos" as "arrivals and departures were advertised an hour late", provoking nonplussed passengers to besiege check-in desks. The system was supposed to automatically adjust clocks for the end of British Summer Time, …

[Alan Donaly]

sounds

Like the computer thought it lived in the US where GW has added a week to the end of summer time (daylight savings time). Though I don't see how that could happen.

[Dale Richards]

UTC?

Shouldn't this kind of system be using UTC to store the current time and the time of all departures and arrivals? The time should only be converted to local time for display. If this were the case, then even if there was a "glitch" and the time wasn't being displayed correctly, all of the ETA times would still be accurate.

[Anonymous Coward]

GMT

Ok who forgot to tick "Automatically Adjust Clock for daylight saving changes"?

[Dave]

Re: sounds

If the computer system is using US DST dates then Gatwick is in for more fun when it mysteriously shifts another hour and all flights are an hour early.

[GrahamT]

Prediction

I would like to predict that next week there will be further chaos at Gatwick as the clocks go back another hour, as the (Windows?) software was probably installed with the default locale of United States.

I have been on the receiving end of technicians at work that can't be bothered selecting United Kingdom from a drop-down list, so I get given a PC/laptop with calendars with middle-endian dates and US spell checkers until I correct it myself, so I know of what I speak.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: UTC?

Of course they /should/ use UTC, but most airports seem to rely on Windows for these things - and not necessarily the "latest and greatest". At Birmingham (or Bristol, possibly both), I noticed that their arrivals and departures run with a Flash applet within Internet Explorer. Can displaying things in a table really be that tricky?? You quite regularly see a BSoD or a BIOS screen at BAA airports though, so this is hardly surprising.

That and the fact that Gatwick is the worst "designed" airport ever won't help (does anyone know why you need to go through security again once you clear passport control??).

Just don't go near Gatwick. Ever.

[Sabahattin Gucukoglu]

And now for the obligatory question ...

Which OS, damn it?

My vote's Windows, which to this day is impossible to configure to store UTC in the RTC. The driver goes through a stupid procedure to try and gestimate UTC on startup from RTC local time and TZ setup, which is of course bloody stupid. Having said that my Windows box went back without a hitch.

Cheers,

Sabahattin

[Simon Reed]

Demon too & BT too

Being a saddo I was up playing games when the clocks changed. My Windows 98-based server did its "Switching to DST" thing. Then my Demon-provided Turnpike software (which uses Demon's time server) said "Ooh, the clock's wrong by an hour" and put it back. The two fought it out for a few minutes until I closed down the Demon software. So it seems their time server did not twig it had changed.

When I worked at BT many moons ago, the standard desktop build had been put together by a Merkin and he got it rolled out before anyone checked it. That meant at least 300 PCs with their mental date format and Merkin dictionary installed. 'Management' decided it wasn't worth changing ... but they weren't the poor sods trying to do a day's work or working on the Helldesk taking the flak.

Can't we just abolish this daft clock changing business altogether? I have yet to have someone explain to me a plausible reason why we do it anyway.

[martin burns]

LHR

Dunno whether it was the same problem, but a number of clocks at LHR were displaying BST this morning.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just pull over for an hour

My XP PC decided to move the clocks back two hours for some reason yesterday. Clever.

In Finland, long-distance trains travelling when the clocks change spend spend an hour in the nearest station until things make sense again. Gatwick should just get all the planes to land for an hour at the nearest airstrip.

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/-/1135231367791

[Mountford D]

Because politicians are cowards

"Can't we just abolish this daft clock changing business altogether? I have yet to have someone explain to me a plausible reason why we do it anyway"

In this day and age, none, other than for the vote casting peasants who do not own time-pieces and share living spaces with their animals. Having said that, I doubt if animals give a jot what time of the day it is as long as they get fed and milked at conditioned times be it 5am or 6am.

[James R Curry]

In their defense...

...Gatwick is about three quarters of the way to anarchy at the best of times.

[Peter Gathercole]

Regular occurance

I dual boot Linux (mostly) and Windows (infrequently) on my laptop, and twice a year have the problem that the RTC on the laptop (which Linux expects to be UTC) is 'corrected' by the stupid way that Windows manages the DST change.

Funny, UNIX has been doing this correctly (or nearly, it used to have the US dates for the switch hardcoded into libc.a) for longer than Windows has been around. Presumably Microsoft implemented Xenix to do it too, but were then not capable of implementing a proper clock display method for Windows.

My guess is that it used to be "Oh well, they are just Personal Computers anyway, it's not important. Nobody will run any critical servers using Windows".

Just another oversight.

Sigh. Coat on.

SLAM.

[Anonymous Coward]

@UTC

A relative of mine works in the airline industry (not direct customer facing - one of the backroom boys 'n' girls) and they've told me that the core stuff all works on UTC.

This snafu is probably just the glossy customer displays - nothing directly relating to passenger safety.

[Piers]

Re: Airport software...

For the record, last time I was flying out of Geneva (Gate B52 if I remember correctly, although no Rock Lobsters in sight...) the gate desk was "running" windows XP. That is, it was booting up, crashing XP and then booting up repeatAdd Infinitum('again and ');

What added to the amusement was hearing the comment of some fellow prospective passengers of around sixty-something saying something like "oh look, it's booting windows and crashing...". Truly we live in the information age.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Dave

"If the computer system is using US DST dates then Gatwick is in for more fun when it mysteriously shifts another hour and all flights are an hour early."

Dude, if Gatwick is using US DST times, they've already got bigger problems than just that...

[Steven Hewittt]

Why OS?

I know that the majority of systems that I used when I worked as the IT bod for a well known airline were all Windows. However the applications that were used for management and the backend stuff all independantly connected to a central application server where we set the time and date manually in UTC. Clients ask the server application for the time periodically, and the client then renders the datetime in either UTC or the Windows locale of the client.

Although to be fair we were pretty advanced and high-tech compared to the actual airports themselves. BAA seem quite happy running Windows 95/98 on terminals with their BSOD's running half the time.

All that said - my Vista and XP boxes updated fine. (As all systems II've ever worked on have in the past 10 years!!!)

[Anonymous Coward]

train hopping

> In Finland, long-distance trains travelling

> when the clocks change spend spend

> an hour in the nearest station until things

> make sense again.

And when the clocks go forward they magically leap an hour's worth of track ahead to stay on timetable?

[Thomas Schulze]

Still not fixed completely...

There were still some instances of that on display this morning, like the time on the transit train. Somebody has got a proper nightmare on their hands there... poor sods ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed on abolishing the time change

but let's stay on gmt. It's easier in winter if the sun is rising before you get in the car. It wakes you up enough to drive.

[laird cummings]

@Simon Reed; Mountford D: Why do we do this?

Why do we do this? Because it actually saves appreciable amounts of money, and also actually affects public safety, among other things. Using the savings time/standard time shift saves up to ~1% on total energy use during affected months. In addition, IIHS (US) found that traffic accidents are reduced ~1.2% during affected times, including up to a 5% reduction in fatal pedestrian hits.

Meanwhile, my alarm clock must be a Democrat - it failed to notice Bush's week-long extension, and reset itself during the night. I was damn-near late for work.

[JeffyPooh]

DST is so last century...

Saving 'daylight' during the evening to reduce artifical lighting and thereby saving the environment, the planet, the children, etc. Yeah yeah yeah.

On the other side of the ledger (never mentioned, never considered) is the added heating cost of having people get up an hour early during the spring and autumn. Heating systems turned on, people using remote car starters, etc.

If they'd dispense with DST and let people sleep in, then the sun would have an extra hour to warm up the houses and defrost the windscreens. In this modern age of efficient lighting, it is well past time to dispense with Daylight Savings Time. An extra hour of artifical heating in the morning wipes out any possible saving in artificial lighting.

DST is a bad idea to begin with; extending it further into the heating season was just plain stoopid.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Finnish trains

'In Finland, long-distance trains travelling when the clocks change spend spend an hour in the nearest station until things make sense again.'

Ah we don't have that problem. Thanks to the unparalleled professionalism of Britain's privatised rail network, you can never be sure what time your train is going to arrive even when the clocks aren't changing.

[Nano nano]

Sphere of influence

Hang on, if the "glitch" was limited to Gatwick airport, how come it allegedly also affected teletext services. which go out over TV broadcast transmitters ?

[laird cummings]

@JeffyPooh; DST is so last century...

<< "On the other side of the ledger (never mentioned, never considered) is the added heating cost of having people get up an hour early during the spring and autumn. " >>

Actually, yes, it *is* considered. Thus the *net* savings is ~1%. That's rather a lot, really. Name me another means for making such a large energy savings, across the board, that can be as easily implemented.

[Adam Williamson]

for Simon Reed

"My Windows 98-based server"

Grhkk!

"Then my Demon-provided Turnpike software"

double grhhkkk!

who turned the clocks back to 1999 without me noticing?

[Paul Simmonds]

The Victorians did it! (as usual)

If it were not for a gentleman by the name of William WIllet (a Victorian entrepreneur) we wouldn't have DST. Being an "early bird" he used to go riding at the crack of dawn and viewed all the cottages of the workers with the blinds still drawn. In the usual style of this sort of person, he thought it was a bit of a waste of daylight not to be up and using it.

He got a young Winston Churchill to put it through Parliament, which may have failed had it not been for the coming of WW 1.

[Anonymous Coward]

@laird cummings

Uhm, instead of fucking with official weights and measures (i.e. time), you could just urge "patriotic" companies to allow their workers to go from 9-5 in the winter to 8-4 in the summer. BTW everyone seems to be forgetting winter time is the "official" time. DST is a shift for summer. Oh, and one last thing, what of the cost increase in software design, procedural changes, and "minor" "glitches" like the one in this article? I'm sure it far outweighs any energy savings.

As a programmer who has had to write 24/7 scheduling software for TV companies with workers around the world, it is litterally impossible to write software that correctly deals with daylight savings time. I mean what do you do when you are trying to schedule a captioner with a 24 hour day to a TV station that happens to have a 25hr day?

How do you display arrival times for airplanes in local time when there are two 1:30 AM's? "Sir when is the next flight from Heathrow?" "1:30 AM sir." "and the next one?" "That's the 1:30 AM after this 1:30 AM"

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows for Airports

I turned up at Leeds-Bradford Airport once to be greeted with the message on all of the flight info boards

"It is now safe to turn off your computer"

[Anonymous Coward]

DST extreme

where I work, all the project managers and PHBs seem to have adopted an extreme form of Daylight Saving. They don't show up till 12 , leave at 4 and work (pronounced "shirk") from home on Fridays. Of course its all done in the name of saving the planet and nothing to do with being workshy, lazy ,good for nothings....

[laird cummings]

@Brent Gardner

<< "Uhm, instead of fucking with official weights and measures (i.e. time), you could just urge "patriotic" companies to allow their workers to go from 9-5 in the winter to 8-4 in the summer." >>

Uhm, right back atcha... since when did 'patriotic' companies ever voluntarily comply uniformly with the government except when give costly incentives? So pull the other one - it's got bells on. OTOH, this particular form of savings was considered by no lesser light than Ben Franklin as a good idea, and has been a standard practice for quite a long time - it should hardly come as a surpise to people, and just because people are ignorant of the benefits is no reason to cease implementing it.

Buncha whiners, really - DST has valid purpose (unlike many government-imposed rules), it's predictable, and is of minor inconvenience, except when someone grossly fails in their basic duties, as in the Gatwick case. There's simply no excuse for Gatwick to have not been able to adjust. After all, they did it correctly last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before...

[Anonymous Coward]

‘Gatwick reduced to anarchy by 'computer glitch'’

No it wasn't. It was reduced to anarchy by an incompetent human.

[Daniel B.]

DST sucks, Yank changes suck even more!

I really, really, *hate* Bush for his stupid extension on an already stupid idea like DST. Here we were smacked with DST back in '97 under the premise of "energy savings". Trash talk, the real reason is that the Mexican finantial institutions want to be ever in-sync with the USA; anyone living in Mexico City would attest that it is useless as people here wake up at 5am, or even *4 am*.

Oh, and thanks to Bush, we had to do an all-night standoff because some clumsy provider set up a lot of servers with US timezones instead of the Mexican Daylight/Std timezones. Go figure, we didn't follow the changes (thank God for our currently burly congress) but still have to watch out on servers going crazy. Oh, and they're all UNIX...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hooray for not practicing DST!

Well, I live in a country which doesn't practice DST (although we switched time zones and had an half-hour forward shift to +8GMT from +7:30GMT in the 80s). The only reason you'd be messing with the living room clock would be to replace the batteries (either that, or taking the clock to the watchmaker to get it fixed).

Of course, DST confuses the hell out of me when I have to meet with American friends in online games. Was Eastern time -4 or -5 (yep, they're -4 EDT and -5 EST)?

Yep, wonderful DST. Big headache for us peeps who don't practice it.

[Darryl]

My favourite DST moment

...was waaay back in Win 95 days, when I was an IRC nut. Typing away one late night, a little window popped up saying that Windows had set my computer's clock back an hour for the DST switch. I thought this was very considerate of it. Then, an hour later, a little window popped up saying that Windows had set my computer's clock back an hour for the DST switch. Then, an hour later, a little window popped up... If I hadn't logged off and gone to bed, I would've been stuck in an endless one-hour time loop a la Groundhog Day.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mid-day Sun

The October change is a revision to *NORMAL* time.

You know, Sun overhead at midday (at least at Greenwich). We've been running an artifical time shift since March.

All those who want to switch to BST permanently are really European apologists.

Here is a thought. Let's just start the working day at 8AM to align 8 working hours evenly around the Mid-day Sun! Farmers can work when they like; it's not like they are the majority of the working population any more.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's only one reason...

"Can't we just abolish this daft clock changing business altogether? I have yet to have someone explain to me a plausible reason why we do it anyway."

We shove the clock forward an hour in the "summer"because we're lazy. If we made the middle of our active day local sun-noon, we'd use as much energy in the morning as in the evening. It would mean having a GMT day of 4 am to 8pm, on average.

Our current working hours were developed to allow *business* to make best use of the most commonly (across the year) daylight hours, when work was the purpose of most people. Factories worked 6-til-6 shifts. Clerical workers needed better light, so started their day later. As more people moved into the clerical fields the "standard working day" became 9-to-5 instead of the 7.30-4.30 the factory floor became as working hours were reduced.

This canting of the working day prompted the introduction of BST as a way of sidestepping everyone's desire to rise later.

And it's stoopid. 12 noon should be when the sun is highest in the sky. If you want to save energy, change the times you work not the time the clocks tell you it is.

[Kamal Hashmi]

Extreme Summer Time

Speaking personally, I'd be happy if we used quadruple summer time in the winter and quintuple in the summer - that way it'd always be light in the evening when I want to go for a walk in the park or relax in the garden. I don't give a crap if it's dark while I'm at work - I have the work lights on anyway even in summer as I work in a building without skylights.

As for saving the planet ... who're you kidding? It's about saving the human race, the planet can survive quite happily without us. If we don't show intelligence then we'll drown - so what? We get what we deserve.

-Kamal.

[John Dougald McCallum]

Let's just start the working day at 8AM

IF ONLY start the day at 0500 start work at 0545 Mon to Fri I would gladly work from 0800 if the Boss would let me

[John Dougald McCallum]

Let's just start the working day at 8AM

IF ONLY start the day at 0500 start work at 0545 Mon to Fri I would gladly work from 0800 if the Boss would let me