Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities • Hacker News Board

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#11

Post by tyingq » Thu, May 11, 2017, 3:24 PM UTC

CodeSheikh wrote: post #6

Perhaps a disruption in airline industry is needed. Maybe one of those mega tech billionaires (Bezos, Musk, Page/Brin etc.) can pay more attention to this market and see investment opportunities. Such disruption would need to go beyond airlines and go towards plane manufacturers level. The fact that there are so little aircraft producers in the world, so monopoly actually starts from there and flows downwards at airl…

It's not an easy problem to solve. A very capable organization, ITA Software, was able to rewrite the shopping part. They failed, however, on delivering a new tech reservations system. Not for lack of money or talent either.

Google bought them for $700M.

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#12

Post by speedyapoc » Thu, May 11, 2017, 3:24 PM UTC

stinky613 wrote: post #2

Speaking of tech failings among airlines... Can anyone tell me what the hell the ticket scanning machines at the gate are doing? In the past week United sent a French woman 2,000 miles in the wrong direction; even though her flight had changed gates, when they scanned her ticket at the (now incorrect) gate it did a normal 'OK' beep and let her through. What in the world is the point of scanning scanning tickets at th…

Almost certainly human error.

Anecdotally, I had a standby ticket recently when my seat was reassigned to a paying customer, although I still had a boarding pass for that seat. I was halfway down the jet bridge before the gate agent realized that my ticket had been revoked.

I imagine it's second nature for gate agents to let passengers through, and one lapse in judgement can cause the United incident, despite the software showing that the ticket was invalid.

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#13

Post by codegeek » Thu, May 11, 2017, 3:25 PM UTC

stinky613 wrote: post #2

Speaking of tech failings among airlines... Can anyone tell me what the hell the ticket scanning machines at the gate are doing? In the past week United sent a French woman 2,000 miles in the wrong direction; even though her flight had changed gates, when they scanned her ticket at the (now incorrect) gate it did a normal 'OK' beep and let her through. What in the world is the point of scanning scanning tickets at th…

Around 2005, they scanned my boarding pass and let me board a wrong flight. I didn't even check the gate properly as I was in a hurry but I found out only when I got to someone's seat asking him to leave because it was "my" seat.

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#14

Post by freehunter » Thu, May 11, 2017, 3:25 PM UTC

CodeSheikh wrote: post #6

Perhaps a disruption in airline industry is needed. Maybe one of those mega tech billionaires (Bezos, Musk, Page/Brin etc.) can pay more attention to this market and see investment opportunities. Such disruption would need to go beyond airlines and go towards plane manufacturers level. The fact that there are so little aircraft producers in the world, so monopoly actually starts from there and flows downwards at airl…

Not likely to happen. It is a very expensive and difficult process to get a new airframe FAA certified to carry commercial passengers, which is part of why the Dreamliner took so long to be delivered. Couple that with basically zero margin for airlines and you have a perfect storm of "it's really expensive to make a new plane and no one will pay for it if you do".

There's a reason you see so many 20+ year old CRJ-900s and MD-80/90s at the airport. Airlines literally cannot afford new planes, and aircraft makers can't get new airframes through the regulator process easily enough. Boeing struggled to get fly-by-wire to pass FAA regulations, how do you think they'd fare trying to replace aluminum with 3D printed plastic?

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#15

Post by heartsucker » Thu, May 11, 2017, 3:25 PM UTC

Slightly off topic, but this is hardly the biggest blunder of the airline industry. A company I worked for last year absolutely tore them apart in a talk at 33c3.

In short, information like your address or passport number is easily accessible, and while it wasn't in the talk (I think), we were able to recover plaintext credit card numbers during the research.

https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7964-where_in_the_world_is_carme...

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#16

Post by casta » Thu, May 11, 2017, 3:26 PM UTC

stinky613 wrote: post #2

Speaking of tech failings among airlines... Can anyone tell me what the hell the ticket scanning machines at the gate are doing? In the past week United sent a French woman 2,000 miles in the wrong direction; even though her flight had changed gates, when they scanned her ticket at the (now incorrect) gate it did a normal 'OK' beep and let her through. What in the world is the point of scanning scanning tickets at th…

In my experience, when I tried to board the wrong flight, the scanner served its purpose making an alerting sound and making sure they'd prevent me from boarding on the wrong airplane.

This was with Delta (both my intended flight and the mistaken one.)

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#17

Post by freehunter » Thu, May 11, 2017, 3:26 PM UTC

kerryfalk wrote: post #9

stinky613 wrote: post #2

Speaking of tech failings among airlines... Can anyone tell me what the hell the ticket scanning machines at the gate are doing? In the past week United sent a French woman 2,000 miles in the wrong direction; even though her flight had changed gates, when they scanned her ticket at the (now incorrect) gate it did a normal 'OK' beep and let her through. What in the world is the point of scanning scanning tickets at th…

This is just a guess but I fly a _lot_ (~40 flights so far this year). My guess is that the software probably did its job, the gate agents are often just automotons and don't really check anything other than your boarding zone.

Even then, I often board with my coworkers who have higher status than me. If we're sitting next to each other and he's in group 2 but I'm in group 6, I'll generally board with him anyway and no one seems to care.

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#18

Post by tdb7893 » Thu, May 11, 2017, 3:27 PM UTC

CodeSheikh wrote: post #6

Perhaps a disruption in airline industry is needed. Maybe one of those mega tech billionaires (Bezos, Musk, Page/Brin etc.) can pay more attention to this market and see investment opportunities. Such disruption would need to go beyond airlines and go towards plane manufacturers level. The fact that there are so little aircraft producers in the world, so monopoly actually starts from there and flows downwards at airl…

The airline industry is already established and low margin so it's not an easy opportunity for disruption. Combine that with heavy regulation and needing tons and tons of very specific expertise and I doubt any VC would touch most of it with a 10 foot pole

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#19

Post by javiramos » Thu, May 11, 2017, 3:27 PM UTC

stinky613 wrote: post #2

Speaking of tech failings among airlines... Can anyone tell me what the hell the ticket scanning machines at the gate are doing? In the past week United sent a French woman 2,000 miles in the wrong direction; even though her flight had changed gates, when they scanned her ticket at the (now incorrect) gate it did a normal 'OK' beep and let her through. What in the world is the point of scanning scanning tickets at th…

Funny- this exact same thing almost happened to my sister a ~week ago. She boarded the wrong airplane (although the scanner beeped without any errors). Luckily, after sitting in the plane for 5 minutes, she realized that she had boarded the wrong plane. Her flight had changed gates.

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#20

Post by mikeash » Thu, May 11, 2017, 3:28 PM UTC

CodeSheikh wrote: post #6

Perhaps a disruption in airline industry is needed. Maybe one of those mega tech billionaires (Bezos, Musk, Page/Brin etc.) can pay more attention to this market and see investment opportunities. Such disruption would need to go beyond airlines and go towards plane manufacturers level. The fact that there are so little aircraft producers in the world, so monopoly actually starts from there and flows downwards at airl…

I don't see a problem with the aircraft themselves. Modern airliners are excellent for the most part. The parts that aren't excellent (like the seats and entertainment systems) are installed by the airlines after the manufacturer is done.

Musk has repeatedly stated that his goal is to get space travel to be like airline travel. Airliners, with their rapid turnaround and zero refurbishment between flights other than cleaning the cabin and refueling the plane, are the model he's shooting for with his rockets.

Essentially all of the problems in air travel come from the airlines, not the airline manufacturers. All of the problems discussed in this article are about ancient backend computer systems that don't get the job done very well, not the actual aircraft.