Computer Glitch Friday Grounded US Airways Flights 140
mschaffer writes "A computer glitch Friday night snarled the travel plans of US Airways customers, as reports flooded in of flights grounded around the country." As someone stranded for several hours yesterday by this outage, "glitch" seems like quite a euphemism. With outgoing flights blocked, and new ones arriving full of passengers expecting to meet connections, the atmosphere got a little heated. Customers could see nice weather, and planes lined up outside, but "The System Is Down" trumps all. The E concourse at Charlotte (a US Airways hub) was packed full of customers ranging from livid (a handful) to merely angry (most) to calmly resigned — which means those of us with seats, snacks, and books or computers. It was disheartening to see how brittle is the infrastructure the airline employs; with the part of the system visible to airline employees down, customers thought they might get more information, or even rebooking, through the US Airways website. But that was down, too, and all the desk staff could do is shrug.
Re:umm... (Score:5, Informative)
I work in airport IT, so I'll describe what I see airline crews doing during trouble. If the system at one gate or terminal is down, yes, then they'll send the plane on it's way. This is called "boarding manually". They simply hand collect tickets, hand count bags, etc, and send the flight off. After they've gathered all of the info thats been collected manually, they'll send it to their local office or front desk and process it at working terminals that have a connection to airline systems. It's a pain, but do-able. But if EVERYBODY is down, then the whole thing grinds to a halt. If no one has any access to all the schedule info, weight and baggage, manifests, etc.... then it's simply impossible to board manually on a massive scale.
Re:umm... (Score:3, Informative)
One of the reasons they went to computers in the first place is because paper systems could no longer handle the workload... And that was back in the 60's when air traffic volumes were a fraction of what they are today. I.E. having to maintain a duplicate paper system would actually slow things down likely without actually providing sufficient backup.
That isn't much help with getting the luggage on the appropriate aircraft. Nor does it help to inform what flights (that you're expecting passengers from) are on time or nearly so and will or will not effect the flight in question. (Let alone routing the luggage involved.) Not to mention the number of passengers and the weight of the luggage - something the pilot needs to know to operate the aircraft safely.
There's a lot more information flowing through the system than just "plane A goes to destination B" and "butt X goes into seat Y". With the system down they don't even know when/where plane 'A' is in order to get butt 'X' onto it.
No offense, but that's because you don't even remotely understand the problem. (And seemingly can't even be bothered to try by asking questions rather than making statements.)