UK Air Traffic Control glitches

From
http://www.forbes.com/business/newsw...tr1393847.html
or http://tinyurl.com/2v49t


"Air control outage adds to UK transport woes
Reuters, 06.03.04, 8:10 AM ET




By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON, June 3 (Reuters) - A computer failure that briefly grounded all
aircraft in Britain at the peak morning time caused airport chaos on
Thursday and raised further questions about the state of the country's
transport infrastructure. ..."

What I found interesting was this:

"... it was a link between an old control centre at West Drayton in
Middlesex and a new one at Swanwick in Hampshire that opened in 2002 -- six
years behind schedule and 230 million pounds ($421 million) over budget.

Just months after the 600-million-pound centre at Swanwick went operational,
there were reports that controllers were being plagued by 'ghost' data on
their screens making it hard to identify real aircraft. "

They went $421 million OVER budget! What the heck is wrong here? Why are
ATC systems so expensive? And with the kinds of computation and radar
capabilities we have now, why is it still so difficult to run a system
efficiently? Well over a billion dollars just to display blips on a screen
so a human can keep them separated? And even with a billion dollar system
there are outages and glitches like this! I know I'm simplifying things
here, so could someone that knows about the nuances of ATC fill me in?

In a related vain, as long as we have an expert on the line, where do you
think ATC is going in the future? How much automation is
reasonable/practical? Are any of the new technologies available or soon to
be available (GPS, ADS-B, TIS-B, etc.) as game changing as I think they will
be? What is holding back progress?

Enquiring minds want to know.

-Aviv Hod