The ancestors of today’s airlines built their first electronic-reservation systems in the early 1950s; Delta’s current system once belonged to a defunct carrier that went bust in 1982.
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Delta Air Lines canceled more than 300 flights Wednesday as it continued to dig out from a crippling computer outage at the start of the week. And in an industry that depends on finicky information systems, these incidents are bound to repeat themselves.
Then there were scheduling issues. The airline’s proposed fix: Fly him to Vegas four days later. The company’s computers were down until about 8.30am. “We want our customers to know we are thoroughly investigating the matter and that we are truly sorry”.
Companies Look Beyond Hotels to the Sharing Economy For Cool Meeting Venues: When was the last time you got excited about meeting in a hotel boardroom or breakout space? Only, it wasn’t directing any traffic. As the electricity was restored, some critical equipment failed to switch over to backups. It was as if someone had turned off the lights for half a day. That caused delays and cancellations to snowball. Is this a sign that airlines aren’t investing enough money in their IT infrastructure? And flight crews can only be on duty for a limited time before rest periods are required by law.
Delta canceled 311 flights on Wednesday.
Brandwatch, a social-tracking service, charted a corresponding tsunami of anger on Southwest’s social media channels. Corporate travel managers are typically responsible for overseeing their companies’ travel budgets and with selecting preferred carriers with which they negotiate fares. “But the really significant piece in this instance was the inability to effectively scale the response”.
And it happened to American Airlines previous year as well. The Delta event has its lessons for CEOs of all airlines, across the globe. For a family facing cancellation or long delays of flights, the amount does not even cover the cost of food and lodging.
IT disasters of this scale are unusual.
The airline also provided overnight accommodations to anyone who had to stay overnight at an airport because of cancelled or heavily delayed flights.
The outage began Monday and led the carrier to scrap about 1,000 flights. Even small glitches paralyses too many things at short notice and there are irate passengers all around. Load factors are high and there is much less flexibility in the system.
In response to questions from Reuters, those airlines did not answer whether their aging systems put them at risk of future disruptions, but all stressed that they are upgrading their technology and are focused on reliability.
“There just isn’t a good answer”, he says. American Airlines canceled flights out of Chicago, Dallas and Miami past year, because of a technology-related mishap. “It doesn’t seem really hostile yet”, she said. Southwest must refund a ticket when it cancels a flight.
For example we’re seeing slowness in a system that airport customer service agents use to process check-ins, conduct boarding and dispatch aircraft. “The company could have done a better job of explaining … what was happening”. In the instant case, failure of the backup system only complicated the issues further. And when it’s not? Japan’s ANA Holdings, an alliance partner of United Airlines, will launch a route between Haneda and NY starting in October.
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