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.
What?! (Score:1, Insightful)
I love it when people melt down and scream and yell. Fucking christ. Shit happens. Shut your mouth, go over to the airport Starbucks and buy yourself an overpriced airport coffee and calm down. You're not helping. You're not the center of the universe, you twit; in fact, they're probably not even going to even up the scales.
(I'm one of those in the calm catagory when it comes to Emergencies, or (more likely) "emergencies.")
Re:Very interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Whatever did we do... (Score:2, Insightful)
...before computers came along and made our lives so much -easier-?
Last, and Dead Last (Score:4, Insightful)
I fly US Airways regularly. Last flight out was late taking off for no apparent reason. Our luggage did not make the connection in their own Hub. Neither did anybody else's. It took over an hour for the luggage clerk to process the long line. I counted over 500 keystrokes required per person. Staff didn't care at either airport. They would not put out luggage on the next plane in (another airlines, and they would have to pay a fee to that airline) so it was over a day to get out luggage. Two days, or three, unless we came back to the airport to pick it up. On the way home to SFO, it took over an hour for them to get out luggage onto the carousel. They had the nerve, over the PA system, to blame the passengers for having, "too much luggage," for the delay.
Consumer Reports rated US Airways at the bottom of customer satisfaction.
Planes fly. Southwest regularly makes last second changes, including flag stops (unscheduled) and re-using planes for "second runs."
There was LOTS that US Airways could have done. First, they could have flown the planes if they wanted too. They planes had already been scheduled, so there were no questions of maintenance or fuel, or flight plans. Second, they could reimburse passengers for the delays. Third, they could have rescheduled some passenger.
Then, of course, as said, there is simply no excuse for the IT to be down for that long, if at all. They had no (working) backup systems, either computers, paper, or people. That is the very definition of incompetent.
I work in IT. As a guy said in my last meeting, “Anybody who designs in RAID 5 should be shot.” Duh.
The fact is that the airlines management is incompetent. This is not an opinion. Simply too many facts. The board should completely clean house. When the questions comes up in the next board meeting of, “What to do?” the answer is, “Duh.”
Re:Whatever did we do... (Score:3, Insightful)
...before computers came along and made our lives so much -easier-?
Not fly anywhere, because it was too expensive.
Re:umm... (Score:5, Insightful)
This simply isn't about the problem. It's about whether the solution has been implemented. Nothing more.
And that is down to whether it is cost-effective to implement the solution. You will never be able to get the probability of failure down to zero. and the cost skyrockets the closer you get to zero. How often do outages like this happen, and how much would it cost to prevent them at every airport worldwide? And to prevent every other conceivable scenario? Yes, it could have been prevented, and lots of other possible outages that didn't happen could have been prevented, but the cost of air tickets would be prohibitive.