Communication Breakdown
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural FAR; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Equipment / Tooling; Procedure
There was a planned [computer] outage by IT for upgrades. Shortly after XA:00 time we received word from the Chief Dispatchers that the outage was canceled. For the next 3 hours work was normal. Around XD:15 I received notification from a Dispatcher working in the Atlantic region that the Captain on [a flight] had been trying to contact me at sector xx to add to his gate fuel. The Captain stated he had been calling for 30 minutes. This is when I learned that my IP TRADE turret was not properly working; however all lights on the turret were green. I then turned up the volume for the back up phone. I noticed that the back up phone is programmed for sectors 14; 25; and 31. Sector 14 on the midnight shift has not been responsible for sector 31 for well over a year. I am not sure when but within the past couple of weeks midnight shift workload has shifted and sector 14 is no longer responsible for sector 25. The new secondary sector for 14 is now sector xx . The back up phone has not been programmed to monitor sector xx. With all of the workload changes going on at this time; IT needs to be copied in on the emails so they can change the programming of the back up phones to coincide with the workload changes happening on midnight shift. I was without a way to monitor sector 38s phones for about 2 hours during my shift. I advised the Chief Dispatchers of this issue and they said IT was working on fixing the phone system. The IP TRADE phone is working now; however calls are not being recorded. In addition to the phone issues this evening; Dispatch View has also had a lot of latency issues and IT still has no solution to recover it. I also had to do an amendment 3 times in Dispatch View before it would let me add a takeoff alternate. Very limited messages were sent out by the Chiefs communicating info to Dispatchers. After the 2 hour outage I was told by a Chief to reboot the IP trade system because now only the odd sectors were affected. After rebooting this in fact was the case. No message was sent out to the floor to remind people to use the phone call log on sharepoint due to the phones not being recorded.
Air carrier Dispatcher reported an unexpected communication issue with company personnel due to equipment problems.