Commercial Fixed Wing
Human-Machine Interface; Communication Breakdown; Time Pressure
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural FAR; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General None Reported / Taken
Equipment / Tooling; Company Policy; Human Factors
Upon reporting for duty and getting turnover from the afternoon dispatcher on sector XY; I was informed that there had been a companywide ACARS outage since about XA00L today. The Dispatcher reported that they were having to relay take off numbers via phone to the captains because of the unscheduled ACARS outage. The Dispatcher did report that load planning was able to transmit final weights. This outage lasted well over 8 hours approached the ten hour mark. The airline was never once ground stopped due to this outage. I had several flights in [my flight following view] that were missing OOOI times. Crews were not reporting times to Dispatch; if they were reporting them to the station; station was not inputting times into the system; [and] therefore [flight following program] was filled with all sorts of erroneous information as to the out; on; off; in times of the flights. Because times were not being input into the system; we were not getting accurate position reports into the system as a result. [Our backup flight tracking program] was working so I did have visual reference of flights that were airborne. Once ACARS began working I was able to message flights that were airborne to get OOOI times and relay them to [Dispatch assistance staff] to have them put them in the system. There were several issues in play here. Many dispatchers had no way of knowing for sure if the flights were airborne; or had been completed due to lack of times showing in [flight following program]. To say that loss of operational control occurred would be a large understatement. Why was the airline not ground stopped due to this issue with ACARS that lasted well over eight hours? We have ground stopped this entire airline due to less impactful operational issues before. I find it disturbing that dispatchers on the afternoon shift kept releasing flights and more was not done to implement strategies to continue and ensure that all dispatchers were able to maintain operational control of all of their flights. Flight crews were not calling stations with their OOOI times and if they were; Station Ops was not putting them in the system. Also during this outage; company email went down and according to Flight Operations Manual pilots are directed to communicate times; weights; etc must be done using company email and or voice if email is not available. Some crews were calling in their OOOI times once they landed at their destinations; however the vast majority did not call in their times to dispatch. Also with this ACARS outage; as a result of [flight following program] not having OOOI times; crew legalities were not properly updated in [flight following program] so we had no way of knowing for sure if crews were legal to operate the flights they were scheduled to operate. If a crew called to get Out Of Duty times; we were unable to provide them to them because the OOOI times from their previous flights were not updated and the 117 desk was unable to accurately determine 117 legality times.
Air carrier Dispatcher reported; during a companywide outage of ACARS; pilot crews were not reporting Out; Off; On and In times; therefore dispatch data was erroneous.