Gatwick Airport Fails to Mind the (Time) Gap

A fine example of modern engineering:

Gatwick airport was in chaos yesterday when computers failed to recognise the end of British summer time. Arrival and departure times for hundreds of flights were advertised an hour late after the UK’s second biggest airport ignored the return to Greenwich mean time. Flight times were also published incorrectly on Teletext, Ceefax and the Gatwick website. Airport spokesman Stuart McDonald said: “It should have been automated. I have never heard of this before.” The error was noticed at 6am, but technicians were not able to reset the airport’s clocks until late in the afternoon.

Chaos? There is no mention of it on the official GAA website. Would you trust your identity, let alone your life, to systems that can not keep time accurately? If this can happen at the busiest single runway airport in the world…

I love the “never happened before” argument, as if the positive spin of hopeful expectations should somehow be equal to the science of predictability. It makes the “solutions-oriented” tone of the GAA Corporate Responsibility report even sweeter.

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