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British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

bbc.co.uk

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Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#31

Post by isostatic »

ptah wrote: post #8
mk_chan wrote: post #5

I was stuck in exactly this situation with my father last year going from UK to Portugal via Heathrow. Hundreds of people past immigration counters joined the lines to get back into the country, stuck in there for about 5 hours in an extremely congested, slow moving crowd. Some of the younger people were so outraged they took to Twitter and Instagram and began a campaign to refund and sue. About 3 hours in, BA decide…

did you get compensated?

BA are required to inform them of the compensation they're entitled to (and provide duty of care)

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#32

Post by isostatic »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #26
trilila wrote: post #19

Seems like software failures are a common occurrence in british banks and airports. Perhaps a culture of corner cutting, and calling it agile, might be the cause?

Or a culture of outsourcing.

Outsourcing to the lowest bidder

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#33

Post by bitbatbangboo »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #26
trilila wrote: post #19

Seems like software failures are a common occurrence in british banks and airports. Perhaps a culture of corner cutting, and calling it agile, might be the cause?

Or a culture of outsourcing.

cries in InfoSys

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#34

Post by isostatic »

pjc50 wrote: post #29
londons_explore wrote: post #9

A failure of IT systems shouldn't stop the plane flying... The gate staff should just let anyone onboard with a legit ticket or a sufficient story about buying one. Sure, some people might get a free ride, or a few legit ticket holders can't get on because the plane is full, but overall, most passengers end up happy. Simple things like "the pilot can't log in to the HR system so he gets paid for the flight" should be…

There's a £2000 fine for passengers with inadequate documentation: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/passenger-documen...

Hwoever every 4-6 passengers they deny boarding is a €2000 fine.

For EU flights especially you still check passports at the gate - indeed it's the only place they are checked.

For other flights they normally check visas at the checkin desk, but if you're transferring you usually get visa checked at the gate. Most people have nice simple visas that pretty much anyone can check, a few troublemakers like me rely on more complex timatic rules (say TWOV in Beijing on multiple tickets), but no reason that can't be checked at gate either.

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#35

Post by isostatic »

IntegralCalcs wrote: post #12

There should be guidelines as to how airlines should address tech problems and flight delays, so people don't end up on the ground for hours, sometimes without access to food or water.

There are

1. Where reference is made to this Article, passengers shall be offered free of charge:

(a) meals and refreshments in a reasonable relation to the waiting time;

(b) hotel accommodation in cases where a stay of one or more nights becomes necessary, or where a stay additional to that intended by the passenger becomes necessary;

(c) transport between the airport and place of accommodation(hotel or other).

2.In addition, passengers shall be offered free of charge two telephone calls, telex or fax messages, or e-mails.

3.In applying this Article, the operating air carrier shall pay particular attention to the needs of persons with reduced mobility and any persons accompanying them, as well as to the needs of unaccompanied children.

Personally I love my right to a telex.

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#37

Post by lazyjeff »

I'm stuck in London right now trying to get to Athens on British Airways because of this IT failure. I went to a gate of an earlier flight where they had opened up a couple of seats, and the gate agents were trying to get me on, but the computer system didn't let them do it and they had to let the flight leave.

It's interesting to see the breakdown of automation. Lines are long yes, but they also don't move because everyone's situation takes half an hour to explain and lots of manual labor to resolve. There's sort of this competitive mentality (leading to frustration) because there are some alternate options (like flights on competing airlines) but every time you refresh, the options dwindle and you can't do anything about it without an agent. They also have run out of hotel vouchers and hotels at the airport are full. They've started processing people by just writing down our concerns and giving us a pager to reduce the length of the line.

I think a lot of this could be resolved with a better auto-booking and notification system. Like n interface that lets you enter in your constraints, and it optimizes for you better than a person can do by hand.

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#38

Post by 14113 »

trilila wrote: post #19

Seems like software failures are a common occurrence in british banks and airports. Perhaps a culture of corner cutting, and calling it agile, might be the cause?

Speaking as someone who (for a time) worked in the IT department of British Airways, the culprit is really just ancient systems that aren't well maintained, along with institutional and industrial pressure not to improve them or upgrade them.

For example, I worked as part of the team that managed the software that allowed pilots to submit flight plans. Any upgrades had to go through multiple weeks of reviews and testing (I don't mean code review - I mean reviews through managers and processes), and was run on some rather ancient hardware. Moreover, thanks to pressure from the pilots union, the system had to be able to accept flight plans by fax, so had a lot of legacy cruft to support that too.

The problem isn't agility, corner cutting or moving too fast - it's moving too slow.

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#40

Post by IntegralCalcs »

isostatic wrote: post #35
IntegralCalcs wrote: post #12

There should be guidelines as to how airlines should address tech problems and flight delays, so people don't end up on the ground for hours, sometimes without access to food or water.

There are 1. Where reference is made to this Article, passengers shall be offered free of charge: (a) meals and refreshments in a reasonable relation to the waiting time; (b) hotel accommodation in cases where a stay of one or more nights becomes necessary, or where a stay additional to that intended by the passenger becomes necessary; (c) transport between the airport and place of accommodation(hotel or other). 2.In…

Yes I meant more with government regulations, and as someone else mentioned having a backup plan for when there are technical difficulties.
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