Air Traffic Control Developmental
Human-Machine Interface; Training / Qualification; Workload
ATC Issue All Types
Air Traffic Control Issued Advisory / Alert; Air Traffic Control Provided Assistance; General Flight Cancelled / Delayed
ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings
Flight Data Processers (FDP) backup processor had been out for a couple of weeks (maybe) before this event. FDP has been marked 'intermittent' on our outage sheet. At the time I was receiving a Radar Assist skills check. We overheard another sector telling their supervisor that FDP was not responding. A few minutes later all FDP stations were reporting down and the facility declared a full FDP outage for about 5-10 minutes. This didn't impact my sectors too bad as we weren't busy. If this had happened just a couple hours sooner it would have had an enormous impact on the safety of our sectors.
The Flight Data Processor (FDP) was out of service at this facility. The back-up processor had already been out of service for about two weeks. FDP is how the facility receives; updates and processes all the flight plans automatically. When this is out of service all data must be accomplished manually.