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espie@) wrote in with this report:
Off to Dublin, or almost.
This ports hackathon started with a reminder that real-life bugs do matter:
my morning flight was cancelled and I arrived in Dublin late that day.Turns out that air traffic uses named waypoints, which are supposed to be
unique, but there’s no central name registry, and two local waypoints ended
up with the same name, which caused huge confusion in air traffic to Ireland:
planes making large detours. As it turns out, there ARE some safety
regulations, so crews can’t fly forever, and Aer Lingus had to cancel my
flight: no idea whether the plane didn’t make it to Paris, or if the crew
logged so many hours that they couldn’t fly back.
(all of this info courtesy ofsthen@andmlarkin@, one being the thorough guy
who always finds out the most obscure details, and the other one having
actual flying experience)
