Maybe every 24 hours a new login password is emailed around the country for good security.

From what I know of the ATC system it's closer to IBM System 360 then to Microsoft 365

Microsoft 363

Give them a couple days and they can reach numerical parity with IBM there!

That's a little unfair to IBM – sure, you're just as beholden to them for life, but at least the service engineer gets to your rack before you know something's gone wrong!

[delayed]

@nxobject I meant litterally. The ATC system is derived from the IBM 9020 which was itself a set of interconnected System 360 systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_9020

I believe it's all virtualized today

That explains the outage. We're just in one of the 5 days of the year they don't cover...

I did a tour of Adelaide airport with Engineers Australia in the 1990s. We visited their obsolete IBM main frame, still running ATC in their computer room. They were tied to it by the certification of the software it was running. Just as you described.

This might be a serious question but it is also the funniest thing I've read all week. Thank you.

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50388001

LOL..

Its more likely the route cause wich is Friday 13th

Microsoft 364