Dispatch Dispatcher
Workload
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General None Reported / Taken
Equipment / Tooling; Human Factors; Procedure
Company decided an unplanned flight planning software shut down at XA00 to XA30pm of the following programs; Dispatch Monitor and Flight Track Plot at a time when dispatchers; 4 total had several flights in the air. Management doing this action in the middle of the day made Dispatcher job very; very difficult to provide a safe environment for the operation. There was no asking of Dispatchers; no choice was given. It was said; we will be shutting down the SABRE products at XA00 for about 30 minutes in Dispatch and make sure you are caught up with your work.1) No diversion or re-routing aircraft would be available without these programs.2) Flight following (the visual following) was only available on the Flight Explorer (not all flights have been showing up all the time on this program lately).3) No alerts available for wx (weather) or ATC NOTAMS4) Made catching up with flights after outage an excessive workload.4a) One of the desks did not work properly and had to move to another desk top in order to get back on line.  Fortunately no incidents or unusual action like diverts or emergencies took place during this outage. ACARS was available for comm. but very difficult to find what aircraft was on each flight no. if worksheets for each dispatcher's desk were not printed. Noticed after outage only one Dispatcher had an individual desk worksheet printed and no printed copies of flight track plot were printed. (To be noted: not all flights are always on the worksheets pertaining to that desk when printed. Example; passed down flights from a previous dispatcher flights don't seem to show up) Suggestions:1) Schedule these outages late at night or when less flights are in the air; might be less convenient for the IT or other companies involved; but cause less of an effect on the operation safety and concerns above.2) Make a checklist for the dispatchers to be prepared; if and when these type of outages are required. 2A) or better planning ahead of time for dispatchers to be planned.3) Management (chief dispatcher/pilot) and other decision making personnel available during these outages that can make emergency decisions or can be easily reached if a situation becomes out of control. 4) The policy of printing the Desk Sheets daily has slacked and the reason is stated above they are not always accurate; suggest the flight track plot for each desk be printed; and or print the whole flight track plot instead and/or fix the accuracy of the desk worksheets.
Air carrier Dispatcher reported his company chose to shut down critical dispatch tools in the middle of the day for IT maintenance that resulted in high workload and reduced dispatch effectiveness.