Narrative:

I am submitting this safety report pertaining to all the flights on the shift involved. The atlantic afternoon shifts begin; as always; at an accelerated pace with shift turnover briefing; self brief; multiple crew briefings and producing multiple safe and legal flight plans within the first hour of the shift. If everything goes in your favor; you are [just then] beginning to grasp operational control.the day in question required dispatchers to modify routes to avoid a large area of forecast severe turbulence. My shift began to quickly deteriorate after the initial bank of aircraft destined for europe were assigned reroutes from gander oceanic ATC. Subsequently; the same flights were being assigned amended clearances for their routing beyond 30W. The next wave of flights departing ZZZ also experienced similar reroutes and I quickly found myself losing situational awareness as well as degraded operational control. The other three atlantic dispatchers were experiencing similar problems based on workload and the constraints of our dispatch tools.the primary challenge is the constraints of our computerized flight planning tool. The effort required to produce a flight plan and transfer it to flight operations computer in a timely manner under challenging conditions can be very frustrating for reasons too many to list. We have 2 versions of this program and neither provides the capability required to ensure dispatchers maintain sufficient support to our airborne flights in a timely manner. Both versions have many issues that require 'work arounds'; logging itself off and locking up while working live flights [is another problem]. I was 1 hour behind on reroutes and also unable to provide re-dispatches in a timely manner because of these constraints. My efforts to make the program accomplish what needed to be done compromised my situational awareness regarding station weather; enroute weather as well as other factors affecting operational control.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A Dispatcher reported the flight workload combined with the inadequate flight planning tools provided by the airline make it difficult and sometimes impossible to provide timely support to enroute flight crews when operating conditions are other than routine.

Narrative: I am submitting this safety report pertaining to all the flights on the shift involved. The Atlantic afternoon shifts begin; as always; at an accelerated pace with shift turnover briefing; self brief; multiple crew briefings and producing multiple safe and legal flight plans within the first hour of the shift. If everything goes in your favor; you are [just then] beginning to grasp operational control.The day in question required dispatchers to modify routes to avoid a large area of forecast severe turbulence. My shift began to quickly deteriorate after the initial bank of aircraft destined for Europe were assigned reroutes from Gander Oceanic ATC. Subsequently; the same flights were being assigned amended clearances for their routing beyond 30W. The next wave of flights departing ZZZ also experienced similar reroutes and I quickly found myself losing situational awareness as well as degraded operational control. The other three Atlantic Dispatchers were experiencing similar problems based on workload and the constraints of our dispatch tools.The primary challenge is the constraints of our computerized flight planning tool. The effort required to produce a flight plan and transfer it to flight operations computer in a timely manner under challenging conditions can be very frustrating for reasons too many to list. We have 2 versions of this program and neither provides the capability required to ensure dispatchers maintain sufficient support to our airborne flights in a timely manner. Both versions have many issues that require 'work arounds'; logging itself off and locking up while working live flights [is another problem]. I was 1 hour behind on reroutes and also unable to provide re-dispatches in a timely manner because of these constraints. My efforts to make the program accomplish what needed to be done compromised my situational awareness regarding station weather; enroute weather as well as other factors affecting operational control.

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.