Somebody forgot to upgrade: Flights delayed, cancelled by GPS rollover

Enlarge / Your flight is arriving WAY ahead of schedule, apparently. (credit: China Aviation Review via Twitter)

The world did not come to an end this past weekend when the 10-bit calendar-week counter in the Global Positioning System's precision timing system "rolled over" back to 0000000-an event that caused older, unpatched GPS systems to suddenly act like they had jumped nearly 20 years back in time. But the long-anticipated reset of the calendar count did apparently lead to cancellations of some airline flights overseas, as technicians failed to catch warnings and update firmware.

According to reports on social media, at least one KLM flight-a Boeing 777 bound from Amsterdam to Bogota-and flights involving as many as 15 Boeing 777s and 787s in China were delayed or canceled over the weekend because of calendar-rollover errors on navigation systems aboard those aircraft. Data for some of the flights identified confirmed lengthy delays in departures, with the KLM flight leaving seven hours behind schedule.

A Reddit user reported that his girlfriend's KLM flight, KL741 from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, was "grounded because of 'something to [do] with the date being wrong and Honeywell can't guarantee the plane is safe.'"

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