[thereddaikon]

They are referring to air crew procedures, not ATC. WHen the crew of an aircraft encounter a failure that doesn't have a common simple response, they consult a procedure book. This is something professional crews are well acquainted with and used to. The problem in the article was with the air traffic control system. They did not have a proper failback procedure and it caused major disruptions.

[jrochkind1]

Their fallback procedure was "do it the manual way". Just like for the pilots. They thought it was a proper one...

[jvanderbot]

This entire subthread is more a response to the suggestion that "The" solution is fuzzing your entire stack to death.