Dispatch Dispatcher
Workload; Time Pressure; Communication Breakdown
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General None Reported / Taken
Human Factors; Procedure
At XA:44; the Company asked the Dispatcher to divert an airborne flight to another location for operational necessity. The Dispatcher ran an inflight scenario and sent the appropriate ARTR for new burn; new destination; new alternate and route. The Dispatcher followed up asking the crew to 'send the diversion message and new ETA when able'. At XB:05; the crew sent back the diversion message which cancels the original flight and creates a new flight with the new city pair. (The new flight usually shows up in XXXX in the 'XXXX1' desk and then has to be moved to the dispatcher's desk.) At XB:12; the Dispatcher notified the shift supervisor that the flight had 'self-diverted' and the new flight needed to be moved to the Dispatcher's desk. At XB:35; the flight arrived at the Dispatcher's desk--approximately 23 minutes after the Supervisor had been notified--during which time; operational control was lost. The Dispatcher was able to maintain visual flight following via the software and communicate with the flight via communication software; but was unable to make further changes to the route during this time. (The crew subsequently took a direct routing.) There were numerous computer outages / updates taking place through out the day; making operational control via secondary means; difficult at best.  Supervisor had just come on duty and had not logged into the computer before relieving the previous supervisor. He then got into a backlog of issues including this one. Supervisor should log in and familiarize himself with today's operations and issues before relieving the previous supervisor. Review with the Supervisor the importance of moving a diverted flight in a timely manner so that operational control can be maintained by the dispatcher. Schedule important computer outages / updates for a day that is less busy (IE a weekend).
Dispatcher reported operational control of a flight was lost and explains how it occurred.