Regional Jet 200 ER/LR (CRJ200)
Dispatch Dispatcher
Workload; Communication Breakdown
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural FAR; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General Flight Cancelled / Delayed
Company Policy; Equipment / Tooling
Today; all dispatchers' dispatch monitors and plots went out of service. The following abilities were lost: flight planning; fuel calculations; ACARS; flight following abilities; emergency/diversion planning (only communication was via company radio IF any aircraft HAPPENED to be on the frequency). The incident span was close to 20-25 minutes and during it; I had one flight in air. My flight landed without any issues or disruptions but if any irregularities in operation were to occur; I would not have any way of knowing. During this incident; some of the dispatchers were told by management and a dispatch coordinator to continue operation with such limited abilities. In such circumstances dispatchers` operational control under FAR 121.533 should not be undermined.Primary reason I am reporting in this issue is to prevent the recurrence of it; or any other system failure that may degrade the amount safety I can provide my flights and I would like to see some sort of fail-safe protocol in placed and would like to prevent dispatchers taking undesired action under the pressure of peer or management.
While trying to flight plan my last flight of the night Dispatch Monitor started to have issues. It was glitching but slightly working. I was then advised that I needed to pull up the ACARS messaging manually because we were not receiving messages. While trying to pull that up Dispatch monitor totally went down and I wasn't able to open the program at all. I then manually closed it out to try and re-open it but it would not. It was then that everyone announced that they lost control of that as well as Plot; our primary means of flight following. I could see plot but because at the time I was coding delays I didn't have it set to my desk. Without access to Dispatch Monitor and being unable to determine my flights via plot; there was no way of following my flights. I had no way of receiving ACARS messages because I have never been trained how to message using the manual system. I was a Lead Station Agent before and was aware of a book with entries in it so I tried using that to find them but was unable.At that point I told Mr. X that we had lost operational control. His was response included him stating 'that if we were to delay the flights we would run into issues with crews timing out'; 'that it would become an even bigger problem and that it would be fixed in just a few minutes'. I then decided that because of that we needed to stop pushing aircraft in the hub; I didn't know if the problem would get worse and didn't want any of my planes; or really all planes to push; until we could get a handle on the situation. So I called and told Hub ops that we had lost operational control and to stop pushing airplanes for the time. I told them that we would call back shortly when we had it back. A few minutes later while I was trying to coordinate with other dispatchers as to what our plan was going to be and the dispatch coordinators were calling IT and on the phone with Mr. Y they told me that 'WE' were pushing airplanes. Immediately following I told Mr. X that I no longer had Operational Control. We then decided that we would start grabbing airplanes from the [weather] Tracker to see when planes took off and to follow them after that. Simultaneously we began to get our programs back and the issue was solved.The event occurred due to an IT system failure coupled with inadequate training on secondary dispatch programs. I am outraged by the actions of company coordinators and Management during this entire situation. There was a gross misunderstanding of the definition of Operational Control and the Operational Authority granted in [the operations manual]. The Director of Operations; Manager of Dispatch and  Coordinators have the authority 'to cancel; delay; consolidate; or reroute a flight or flights to accommodate operational considerations; and Authority to impose a more conservative operational safety-oriented course of action on a flight or group of flights; if in his judgment it is necessary to ensure a safe and reasonable operation'. In this case the exact opposite occurred; the Coordinator acting in accordance with the Director of Operations decided to tell the hub to begin pushing airplanes. That is blatantly against FAR 121.533 as well as company [operations manual]. I believe that after having spoken to Management regarding [the operations manual] related to Coordinators' messaging flight crews via ACARS without notifying the dispatcher in charge of the flight; as well as wrongful handling of this event tonight. They need to be advised of the actual definition of Operational Control and Authority as defined in the FARs and [the operations manual]. In my experience thus far there is a clear problem related to this issue.
CRJ200 dispatchers described a computer outage that resulted in the loss of operational control of the airborne aircraft they were flight following. Management did not want to delay any flights that were ready to pushback at the hub; even though the dispatchers could not communicate with or monitor the flights they were responsible for.