A Different Terror in France!

Airport systems in Paris Orly International Airport use a system called DECOR, which is used by air traffic controllers to communicate weather information to pilots. Pilots rely on the system when weather conditions are poor. The problem with DECOR is that it runs on Windows 3.1 which hasn’t been supported since 2001.

DECOR’s breakdown on Saturday prevented air traffic controllers from providing pilots with Runway Visual Range, or RVR, information. The RVR is a value that determines the distance a pilot can see down the runway. Add to the mayhem, Orly was engulfed by a fog even as the engineers tried to find and patch the glitch in the operating system. The result was that all flights landing and taking off from Orly airport were grounded as a precaution through the day. Flights were diverted to other Airports in Paris, such as Charles de Gaulle and Lyon.

Installation of MS-DOS 6.22, the underlying operating system Windows 3.1 sits on top of.

There are only 3 people who know how to perform maintenance on this system and 1 of them is retiring soon. They plan on decommissioning the system and upgrading by 2017.

Note to self, only fly into Charles de Gaulle.

“Orly Airport P1190137” by David.Monniaux – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orly_Airport_P1190137.jpg#/media/File:Orly_Airport_P1190137.jpg