Yeah, well I was coming back from Hungary on an IFR flight. At 10hr20 cruising happily along at FL130 above solid Ice filled cloud deck north of Munich (going till 12000) the controller called me and mentioned NXXX I have a interesting information for you the Belgian FIR is closed…..We have not further information but you may proceed for the time being…Okayyyyyyyy…911 scenarios already starting to pop up in my head…so I continued and started thinking of my back up plan….
Finally above Frankfurt I had to make some decisions…as the ATC thing was still completely down. So I requested if I would be allowed to enter the FIR VFR. Which was confirmed after a few minutes from the controller. So I asked for the latest weather at Liege and that was quickly countered with a reply we have NO connection with ACC Brussels and can not provide with any further information. Alternatively I used the Maastricht weather update which was Okay. I went through the cloud deck after Frankfurt Hahn till I was VMC ans still above MSA and cancelled IFR…
Now I was on my own 
No answer from Brussel info 126.9 no contact with Liege App. So I reverted back to Langen to ask for a Military boys frequency as I was going to drill through TSA’s , TRA etc.VFR..And yes a friendly female controller gave a squawk and by avoiding the Liege TMA and flying a low air tactical mission VFR over the Ardennes I was back at my home base…
Anybody else had some fun like me… ?
It seem they had a power failure and their generators gone down.
Independent
my VFR Sky Demon subscription paid itself off yesterday..it helped a great deal to switch from IFR mind set to VFR again (bearing in mind a have a KLN90B very good for IFR stuff though VFR less)
If you only had an EIR would this be a Mayday and continue regardless? 
Does a Mayday trump airspace closure!
Somehow I would have expected such an event somewhere else but not in the heart of Europe :-(
Shit happens. Just like with any aviation incident: let us wait for the official investigation report.
That said, this incident makes me less than proud to be a Belgian – but that has happened before. Too often, in fact.
Probably the Belgian fries that fell into the transformer. Or someone in need of the outlet to make fries…
Let us not fall into clichés… Let me tell you instead of this park of +/- 30 Unix workstations under my charge, one of which always failed around 9 AM – turned out one chap used to pull its power plug because it so neatly fitted his coffee maker.
Seriously though: all is rumour and no more than rumour at this stage. The most coherent story I heard yet has it that, when testing the UPS, the UPS’s power was directed not only at the radar and computers and radios and what not, but at the same time at the power grid. Voltage went up high enough to blow fuses both at the UPS generator and at the nearest grid transformer station – and the rest was silence. Mind you this is speculation, worth as much as you paid for it. But if this story be sooth, it is easy to understand the repair took some time.
Let us not fall into clichés…
I knew you would appreciate that
Let me tell you instead of this park of +/- 30 Unix workstations under my charge, …
Heard about the “Bastard Operator from Hell”? If not I think you’ll get a kick out of that.
What baffled me was the lack of basic contingency in place in all radar sectors I was really completely left in the blue like with a sort it out yourself! Bye Bye
Hello world we lost contact with Brussels
Which I did by proposing myself to proceed VFR and to get a Mil frequency as back up it was Belga Info 129.325, never used it before…
