31–40 of 117 posts
Have people forgotten they can use mobile apps?
Not everyone has a phone. Not everyone has that app (whatever it is... the airport, the airline, the travel agency), using an app is always harder than looking at the real-time displays especially if your hands are full of luggage.
Corollary:
A few do have a phone, but it is not a smartphone.
Have people forgotten they can use mobile apps?
In my experience, changes often show up in Kayak ahead of the airport dashboards. I check apps or notifications before the official dashboards now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These screens build information from multiple sources inc. airlines, ground control, and in some cases airport management. They're typically run off-site at a data center since that provides high resiliency and some data is sourced from outside the airport anyway. If the airport has a dedicated fiber channel between their data center and airport itself and it was damaged, this could be the result. The question I'd as…
It seems so strange that they wouldn’t have a redundant link (like the various options you suggested) or at least fall back to easily available public data (flight information sites) that would at least help some.
If there was a digital fallback, it would absolutely have to have something to tell commuters that the information might be stale (as someone frantically types up flight updates in a back room somewhere)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think gates change when planes need to be re-routed.
That’s the exception and not the rule and when it changes it’s typically just around the corner and you can do show infos on the old gate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems so strange that they wouldn’t have a redundant link (like the various options you suggested) or at least fall back to easily available public data (flight information sites) that would at least help some.
Or even the option of inputting the data manually on a local system, so they could use the big displays rather than some whiteboards!
The medium is the message, etc...
If only London airports could print the gates on the tickets. But I guess they would miss out on that sweet revenue from consumption.
Most airports and airlines let you get gate information fro their websites/apps as well though..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These screens build information from multiple sources inc. airlines, ground control, and in some cases airport management. They're typically run off-site at a data center since that provides high resiliency and some data is sourced from outside the airport anyway. If the airport has a dedicated fiber channel between their data center and airport itself and it was damaged, this could be the result. The question I'd as…
> why they have no fallback strategies They do. It's the whiteboards. Whiteboards are cheap, resilient and robust. Exactly what one wants for a backup.
I struggle a little to see how there is a single point of failure here (a fibre optic cable). I’d have thought the screens were powered by a device plugged into a LAN. Would be interested if anyone knows the architecture of such screens and why there is such a single point of failure in the whole airport.
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252441044/Gatwick-Airpor...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/13/cyber-attack-hit...