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Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

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Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#81

Post by Shivatron »

pdelbarba wrote: post #27
freehunter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-900…

The GA industry is running up against the same problems. Go to your local flight school and 99% of the time you'll just see a row of 1970s Cessnas/Pipers. Recently there has been some push back against the FAA's certification programs due to the fact that MEMS systems are inherently more reliable instruments than gyroscopes powered by engine driven vacuum pumps. This resulted in some legislative changes and now you c…

> Go to your local flight school and 99% of the time you'll just see a row of 1970s Cessnas/Pipers.

This neatly illustrates why: http://i.imgur.com/Un22IYK.png

It's not just certification, either. Product liability accounts for a large part of this increase: "Average cost of manufacturer's liability insurance for each airplane manufactured in the U.S. had risen from approximately $50 per plane in 1962 to $100,000 per plane in 1988." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Revitalizatio...)

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#82

Post by uxhacker »

adam_gyroscope wrote: post #69

Disclaimer: I built airline reservations systems with ITA Software. I don't recall there being a minimum character count for SSR codes, but in legacy reservations systems (and the passenger name records (PNR) that contain these SSRs) there's for sure a max. Airline reservations systems never met a fixed-width format they didn't like, and the reason is that for a long, long time the unit of storage for a PNR was a blo…

In the early systems and I think that has changed the PNR used to be the hash of physical memory location of the booking.

Even back in 2002 most of the software used to deal with reservations was written in Assembler. I don't know if that has changed.

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#83

Post by uxhacker »

grecy wrote: post #21

From experience I can say the Telco industry is exactly the same. It would not surprise me to find any industry that has been around 40+ years will be the same - they want to spend time and money doing what they do, IT is seen as nothing more than an expensive nuisance. Love them or hate then, that's why for example Uber & Telsa are so "disruptive" - they are focusing on the IT and the "Thing" (taxis / cars) is virtu…

This did happen in Europe with a RyanAir and EasyJet. They used a system called OpenSkies that was far cheaper to operate. It lacked lots of the of connectivity that the old systems have to Travel Agents and other Airlines.

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#84

Post by pdelbarba »

Shivatron wrote: post #81
pdelbarba wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GA industry is running up against the same problems. Go to your local flight school and 99% of the time you'll just see a row of 1970s Cessnas/Pipers. Recently there has been some push back against the FAA's certification programs due to the fact that MEMS systems are inherently more reliable instruments than gyroscopes powered by engine driven vacuum pumps. This resulted in some legislative changes and now you c…

> Go to your local flight school and 99% of the time you'll just see a row of 1970s Cessnas/Pipers. This neatly illustrates why: http://i.imgur.com/Un22IYK.png It's not just certification, either. Product liability accounts for a large part of this increase: "Average cost of manufacturer's liability insurance for each airplane manufactured in the U.S. had risen from approximately $50 per plane in 1962 to $100,000 per…

Yea, I'm really comparing two disparate issues here. The aircraft cost, for previously certified airframes, ie. the C172SP, as opposed to an SR22 or something, is almost entirely liability liability inflated while avionics are more heavily driven by certification.

This is why the experimental market is doing so well right now. No need to pay for either :P

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#85

Post by mseebach »

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…

I've was once "rejected" by the gate-machine when I accidentally gave them an old boarding pass - however, this was on EasyJet, an airline which actually runs on 21st century software.

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#86

Post by adam_gyroscope »

uxhacker wrote: post #82
adam_gyroscope wrote: post #69

Disclaimer: I built airline reservations systems with ITA Software. I don't recall there being a minimum character count for SSR codes, but in legacy reservations systems (and the passenger name records (PNR) that contain these SSRs) there's for sure a max. Airline reservations systems never met a fixed-width format they didn't like, and the reason is that for a long, long time the unit of storage for a PNR was a blo…

In the early systems and I think that has changed the PNR used to be the hash of physical memory location of the booking. Even back in 2002 most of the software used to deal with reservations was written in Assembler. I don't know if that has changed.

The six-character confirmation code you get when you book? That was the block address on disk of the start of your PNR.

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#87

Post by stinky613 »

caseysoftware wrote: post #43
javiramos wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which gets at the real question.. what is the scanner actually checking? From the numerous comments here, it's not matching the boarding pass to the flight or gate. Is it just boarding group? Is it that "yes, this is a valid ticket" or something else entirely? Seems like an easy way to "disappear" - basically book a fight going somewhere, look around until you find a flight with open seats (Southwest would be best as…

> Which gets at the real question.. what is the scanner actually checking?

That's the question that's been nagging me since the day I read about this particular mistake. I wonder if there are any active public subreddits of airline workers; somewhere where I could hear a first-hand account of what those scanners are checking.

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#88

Post by pdelbarba »

uxhacker wrote: post #80
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 Europe they are meant to check the name on the boarding pass against an id such as a passport. I believe that the reader just shows your name. I also think what the readers do is update the system to say that you are on that flight. This is for revenue reasons. Tickets can be issued by other airlines, and the revenue is not counted until you are on the flight. Also in Europe the system matches you with your luggag…

It's also for manifest reasons. They need to have information on who and what is in the aircraft to calculate takeoff distance, power, flap settings, etc. and to account for everyone in the event of an accident or someone at CBP getting bored.

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#89

Post by grecy »

notthemessiah wrote: post #49
grecy wrote: post #21

From experience I can say the Telco industry is exactly the same. It would not surprise me to find any industry that has been around 40+ years will be the same - they want to spend time and money doing what they do, IT is seen as nothing more than an expensive nuisance. Love them or hate then, that's why for example Uber & Telsa are so "disruptive" - they are focusing on the IT and the "Thing" (taxis / cars) is virtu…

"Exactly the same" only if you ignore everything about them that isn't consumer facing. Telcos are high-profit margin regional monopolies, whereas airlines operate at the margins and are fiercely competitive. Perhaps the only thing that can be said about them being similar is that they are high barrier-to-entry industries.

I meant "exactly the same" in the sense of the article - "letting old technology abuse their customers".

These old industries are dinosaurs in "the age of the internet" and have no clue what they are doing with regard to IT / Systems.

Re: Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

#90

Post by josemrb »

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…

I've built a few systems for low-cost airlines in South America. There shouldn't be a lot of difference with bigger airlines around the world.

The boarding software usually checks that:

  - The boarding pass is valid (checksum)
  - The flight state is correct e.g. 'boarding' and 'open'
  - The passenger did check-in
  - The passenger haven't boarded yet
More advanced implementations can match the gate with the flight, this is optional.

The beep usually is a response from the reader indicating that the code has been read successfully.

The result of the operation is displayed in a screen and the attendant has to read it and act accordingly.

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