Dispatch Dispatcher
Communication Breakdown; Confusion
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General None Reported / Taken
Company Policy; Human Factors; Procedure
Aircraft X was a red eye flight ZZZ-ZZZ1. I came in and got my pass down from the night Dispatcher as usual. While briefing myself on the weather I noticed ZZZ Center was ATC zero for the night from XA00z-XD00z per the Flow Constrained Area (FCA) and NOTAMs. When I took my pass down I sat down and immediately got a ACARS for Aircraft X holding for ZZZ1 due to the ATC zero. I then called the Dispatcher that passed the flight to me; and said; hey why did we let this plane go when ZZZ1 is ATC zero; which was approximately 50 minutes from the time I received the ACARS for holding. That Dispatcher said Operations told them it was only valid until XC30z. My issue with this is first off how and why was the flight able to push 20 minutes early? Pushing early pushed them even more into the FCA. With the Center being closed that makes this an illegal Dispatch because per the FCA we knew we were not able to enter ZZZ Center until XD00z; when we had an ETA of entering the Center about 50 minutes before that. My second issue is why did the Dispatcher let the flight depart early? Was this FCA not communicated to the flight crew? Why is the Dispatcher listening to Operations manager pressure rather than looking at the published NOTAMs and FCAs for times. The Operations manager has zero operational control and say in how and when we dispatch our flights. Operations often will tell us things to make their job easier and to get on time performance numbers not based off anything to do with legal dispatching of a flight. Just fueling the flight up for holding due to entering the airspace while it is closed is neglectful. While we were able to get through [it] this time with no diversions; if the Center is going to close for cleaning on a regular basis overnight; we as a company and in Dispatch and Operations need to have better communication about this; We need to establish a better plan of attack for this if it is to be a regular thing. We also need to plan for what is published based off NOTAMs and FCA's not what Operations says. We need to as a group communicate better with each other; with Operations; and to our flight crews to help stop these things from happening in the future. Just because it went off without a diversion this morning does not mean that we can do the same thing in future. I would hope we can learn from this as a group and come up with better ways to handle it.
Dispatcher reported a flight departed early into a Flow Constrained Area (FCA) and questioned company procedures that allowed this to occur.