The MCS Project with Cathay Pacific Airways

Joachim played a major role in the design and implementation of the Movement Control System (MCS) for Cathay Pacific Airways in Hong Kong. This system keeps track of Cathay's aircraft fleet. A graphical display on multi-screen Sun workstations shows aircraft routes with real time updates based on departure and arrival times received from Telex messages and automatic on-board transmitters (ACARS).

MCS includes sophisticated communication mechanisms. It communicates with Cathay's IBM Mainframe computers to synchronize its database with Flight Planning and corporate information systems. The system automatically generates Telex messages addressed to all interested parties (locally and at destination airports) when MCS users decide on solutions to a schedule disruption. In-bound Telex messages from stations around the world are also automatically processed.

The system also performs extensive constraint checking (minimum ground times, maintenance requirements, passenger connections, airport curfews etc.). It supports multiple temporary scenarios (what if?), which can be investigated without immediately affecting the master schedule.

The required high availability for this around-the-clock system was achieved through redundant hardware and automatic recovery features. All critical equipment is connected to two independent LANs with automatic switching in case of a network failure. A second server functions as a hot standby for the database system should the primary server become unavailable.

During the design of MCS Joachim acted as general technical consultant. He was mainly responsible for the fault tolerance of the system, the efficient implementation of two screen graphics, the integration of the software tools utilized in MCS, and the general operational feasibility of MCS. In particular he designed and implemented interfaces between ICL's Decision Power toolkit (used for constraint checking and general control functions) and Ingres, NeWS, and C. He was also heavily involved in database design and implementation especially in regard to fault tolerance.

MCS has been operational since November 1991. During the later phases of the project Joachim was appointed team leader and directed the efforts of 4 software engineers.