The aircraft might not be flying, but the certificate has gone on vacation

OFFBEAT

Information is not forthcoming from this screen

BORK!BORK!BORK! We still don't know what caused the air traffic control mayhem in the UK in early September, but one information board at Luton Airport appears to have gone out in sympathy.

Spotted by Register reader Mark, the digital sign usually shows passenger information. Today, however, it looks like either the system clock is wrong or someone has forgotten to renew a server certificate.

It's not the usual "DNS. It's always DNS," but not far off.

Yes, we have no information

For those blissfully unaware, the UK's air traffic control system has had a bad week. A glitch in National Air Traffic Services (NATS) resulted in thousands of flight cancellations and travel disruption for around 330,000 passengers. And it appears whoever is running this information board at Luton has done the computing equivalent of "anything you can do I can do better."

Luton Airport is a base for the likes of Ryanair and easyJet. Its logo looks like someone was playing Tetris when they were asked to dream up the branding, and it celebrated 5.5 million passengers passing through over the summer.

The airport was not spared the chaos, along with many others, but the good news is that our reader's flight departed on time, and a delicious, cold adult beverage was waiting at the destination.

For others wondering what has become of their flight, it's good to see that the information boards are already in another time zone, or whoever is responsible for keeping the server certificate valid has taken a well-earned vacation.

Nobody really needed that information anyhow, did they? ®