No mention of plane, pilot, passenger and cargo manifests. So why the 4 hour lead time, is this the time it takes UK Authorities to look people up or workout if the cargo could be dangerous in an airborne Anthrax (Gruinard) Island [1] or Japanese subway Sarin [2], or an IRA favourite, fertilizer bomb thats bypassed the usual purchase reporting regulations used by people like Jeremy Clarkson and Harry Metcalfe as their store of wealth[3]?
It makes me wonder just how much more surveillance of the population exists, knowing I cant even step out of the front door without attracting surveillance of the type that followed Dr David Kelly.
Sure its not a cyber attack per se, carried out over the internet like a DDOS attack or a brute force password guessing attack with port knocking mitigation, but how would one carry out a cyber attack on this system if the only attack vector is from people submitting flight plans?
There sure is a constant playing down of the cyber attack angle to this which makes me think someone wants to Blurred Lines!
One point on the lack of uniquely named global way points, which is the main crux of the problem falling over if some are to be believed.
The USA demonstrates a disproportionate number of similar names, by virtue of Europeans migrating to the US [4]. So has this situation arisen with this system in other parts of the world like in the US? How can a country that created the globe spanning British Empire become so insular with regards to air travel in this way?
I'd agree with the initial assessment that there appears to be a lack of testing, but are the specifications simply not fit for purpose? I'm sure various pilots could speak out here, because some of the regulations require planes to be minimally distanced from each other when transiting across the UK.
On the point of ICAO and other bodies to eradicate non-unique waypoint names, its clear there is some legacy constraint still impeding the safety of air travellers, perhaps caused by poor audio quality analogue radio, so perhaps its time for the unambiguous and globally recognised What 3 Words form of location identifier, to come into effect?
The UK police already prefer it to speed up response times [4]. And although the same location can create 3 different words, suggesting drift with GPS [5], even if What 3 Words could not be used for a global system, having something a bit longer to create an easily recognisable human globally unique identifier is needed for these flight plans and perhaps maritime situations.
Obviously global coordination will be like herding cats, and if such a fixed size global network of cells were introduced, some area's like transiting over the Atlantic or Pacific could command bigger cells, but transiting over built up areas like London would require smaller sized identifiable cells. But IF ever there was a time for the New World Order to step up to the plate and assert itself, to create a Globally Unique Place ID (GUPID) for the whole planet, now is the time.
On the point of humans were kept safe, only by the sheer common sense of the pilots and traffic control tower staff, its not something NATS did or should claim, their systems were down, so everyone had to resort back to pen and paper and blocks in queues, and apart from Silverstone when the F1 British Grand Prix is on, is air space ever that densely populated.
NATS were caught with their pants down at so many levels of altitude, is this laissez faire UK management style that saw the Govt having to step in to bail out the banks during the financial crisis, still infecting other parts of UK life and still coming to light?
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Zr0IPtx80
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTr1lquCQMg
[3] https://youtu.be/LS54AJSadT4?t=279
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._places_named_afte...
[5] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-21/u-k-polic...
[6] https://support.what3words.com/en/articles/2212837-why-do-i-...