Narrative:

There was a contract flight planning system outage that was scheduled to last for 90 minutes. Shortly after outage began I received the oceanic clearance message from an airborne flight. They did receive a re route but the flight planning system was down and I was not sure how I could provide them with the new fuel burn; etp information; or even just to check to make sure they had enough fuel to continue to their destination. I advised the contract flight planning system masters that our airborne flight had received a reroute and I needed to run a new flight plan and asked if there was any way I could do this with their system being down. Their first answer was no then they said yes but; it would have to be done in a separate part of system and I would have to rebuild the flight completely in order to set up the original scenario; and then I would be able to enter their route to see the changes in fuel; etp's; etc. I spent the next 1/2 hour to 45 minutes trying to run the plan in the 'back up' contract flight planning system system with no luck; it was not working. I advised contract flight planning system of this and they told me I would have to wait till their system came back up in about an hour and a half. While I was trying to run new numbers; the crew sent me an ACARS asking for their new etp and fuel burn info. So; I called them on the satcom and advised them my flight planning system was down and I had no way to run the new fuel numbers or verify their etp information for their reroute. The contract flight planning system came back up on schedule but immediately went into a 6 minute ram load outage where I couldn't run any flight plans. So; over an hour after the reroute; I tried to get back in and run numbers for the reroute only to have the system give me an error saying the 'upper wind data' was not available. I tried and tried and tried with several suggestions from the contract flight planning system masters to no avail. One of the masters told me just to run the flight plan with the 'average winds for the month' and give the crew the new burn and etp information from this. I don't think running flight plans with 'the average wind component for the month' is going to give us accurate etp or burn information yet we are being asked to do this and give this to the crew? In addition to this; I had weather in china that I was dealing with only making the problem with my flight take that much longer. After lots of further help from some other people and contract flight planning system; I was able to finally get this information to the crew but it was about 3-4 hours after the fact and the crew had already coasted into europe by the time I was able to tell them that their etp's remained unchanged. If this had been an emergency of any kind; it would have been a real big problem that I could not access contract flight planning system. It was still a problem even on something as simple as a reroute because the crew needs the updated fuel burn and etp info. What if they did not have enough fuel to make it to destination? What if the etp's had changed? There needs to be a failsafe backup to contract flight planning system when it is out of service. And; it needs to be carefully selected when an outage occurs because often times these outages happen at the worst possible time.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An International Flight Dispatcher reported that the contract flight planning system his Air Carrier utilizes was out of service when a flight needed revised fuel and ETP's because of a reroute. He was unable to provide the information in a timely manner.

Narrative: There was a contract flight planning system outage that was scheduled to last for 90 minutes. Shortly after outage began I received the oceanic clearance message from an airborne flight. They did receive a re route but the flight planning system was down and I was not sure how I could provide them with the new fuel burn; ETP information; or even just to check to make sure they had enough fuel to continue to their destination. I advised the contract flight planning system masters that our airborne flight had received a reroute and I needed to run a new flight plan and asked if there was any way I could do this with their system being down. Their first answer was NO then they said YES BUT; it would have to be done in a separate part of system and I would have to rebuild the flight completely in order to set up the original scenario; and then I would be able to enter their route to see the changes in fuel; ETP's; etc. I spent the next 1/2 hour to 45 minutes trying to run the plan in the 'back up' contract flight planning system system with no luck; it was not working. I advised contract flight planning system of this and they told me I would have to wait till their system came back up in about an hour and a half. While I was trying to run new numbers; the crew sent me an ACARS asking for their new ETP and fuel burn info. So; I called them on the SATCOM and advised them my flight planning system was down and I had no way to run the new fuel numbers or verify their ETP information for their reroute. The contract flight planning system came back up on schedule but immediately went into a 6 minute ram load outage where I couldn't run any flight plans. So; over an hour after the reroute; I tried to get back in and run numbers for the reroute only to have the system give me an error saying the 'upper wind data' was not available. I tried and tried and tried with several suggestions from the contract flight planning system masters to no avail. One of the masters told me just to run the flight plan with the 'average winds for the month' and give the crew the new burn and ETP information from this. I don't think running flight plans with 'the average wind component for the month' is going to give us accurate ETP or burn information yet we are being asked to do this and give this to the crew? In addition to this; I had weather in China that I was dealing with only making the problem with my flight take that much longer. After lots of further help from some other people and contract flight planning system; I was able to finally get this information to the crew but it was about 3-4 hours after the fact and the crew had already coasted into Europe by the time I was able to tell them that their ETP's remained unchanged. If this had been an emergency of any kind; it would have been a real big problem that I could not access contract flight planning system. It was still a problem even on something as simple as a reroute because the crew needs the updated fuel burn and ETP info. What if they did not have enough fuel to make it to destination? What if the ETP's had changed? There needs to be a failsafe backup to contract flight planning system when it is out of service. And; it needs to be carefully selected when an outage occurs because often times these outages happen at the worst possible time.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.