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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

#61

Post by mattlondon »

mothsonasloth wrote: post #42

[Controversial post] This is what happens when you treat "IT" as a cost centre and outsource it to India with TCS, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Accenture etc. In the case of BA; its Tata Consultancy Service (TCS). I can't comment on outsourcing to Phillipines, Ukraine or Malaysia. I've worked with two companies that did their outsourcing to India and it was a shitshow. First and foremost there is the cultural barrier, sure…

I also experienced the high-turnover thing.

This was probably about 8 or 9 years ago now but the guys from India I workeded with at a BigCo (i.e. both me and them were at the same BigCo) were saying that as soon as they get some real experience of working hands-on and directly with engineers from the UK (and I presume the US as well) then that is seen as a huge thing in terms of their career and they'd be fools not to cash in on that. So you'd work with someone for 6 months, maybe 9, then they'd move to a competitor for a big promotion and a 50% pay rise for their proven skills in working with people from the UK.

You can't blame them for that. Sometimes you have got to play the system to get ahead, because sure as hell the system won't care for you :)

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#62

Post by namdnay »

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…

> A failure of IT systems shouldn't stop the plane flying...

You don't realise how much IT is involved in the process of loading a plane. Just the weight and balance calculation will take a very long time if done manually.

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#63

Post by isostatic »

tluyben2 wrote: post #56
isostatic wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> For EU flights especially you still check passports at the gate - indeed it's the only place they are checked. Which countries? I fly a lot NL ES, ES DE and they don't check my passport usually. I do take it because sometimes they ask for it, but mostly they don't. The UK obviously being the outlier; very paranoid with extremely old scanners so security takes a long time, especially at Heathrow.

I was talking about BA flights. BA check passports at the gate to all destinations aside from domestic UK ones (and maybe London-Dublin -- I haven't done that flight)

I don't believe they run any inter-schengen or other "domestic" flights, and the 5th freedom flights they do run are like Singapore to Sydney so attract passport viewing.

Security is irelevent to BA's problems.

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#64

Post by isostatic »

mugsie wrote: post #41
isostatic wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I believe they still check IDs at the gate, even for internal flights. (I am pretty sure they checked my ID the last time I did one) - It is not an passport check, just an ID check at the gate to match person to ticket (as the security in UK airport just check boarding passes, not IDs)

Not BA, although I haven't flown domestic for a few months.

Airlines like Ryanair do check photo ID on domestic, but that's for revenue purposes (to stop people selling tickets on the black market)

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#65

Post by alams »

mothsonasloth wrote: post #42

[Controversial post] This is what happens when you treat "IT" as a cost centre and outsource it to India with TCS, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Accenture etc. In the case of BA; its Tata Consultancy Service (TCS). I can't comment on outsourcing to Phillipines, Ukraine or Malaysia. I've worked with two companies that did their outsourcing to India and it was a shitshow. First and foremost there is the cultural barrier, sure…

I was looking for this comment, where someone just blame Indian IT teams without any factual data that this is caused by the Indian IT teams. Just waiting for an opportunity to pour personal hatred and resentment. Just like I expected someone will blame indian IT teams without any actual data.

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#67

Post by Gpetrium »

dustinmoris wrote: post #45
mothsonasloth wrote: post #42

[Controversial post] This is what happens when you treat "IT" as a cost centre and outsource it to India with TCS, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Accenture etc. In the case of BA; its Tata Consultancy Service (TCS). I can't comment on outsourcing to Phillipines, Ukraine or Malaysia. I've worked with two companies that did their outsourcing to India and it was a shitshow. First and foremost there is the cultural barrier, sure…

Minor nitpick, the language is called Malayalam, not "Malalayam". It's easy to remember, because it is the only language in the world which reads the same from back to front ;) > Therefore a lot of undocumented knowledge gets lost which inevitably causes problems when doing maintenance or solving outages. One week you are working with a brilliant person, the next week they are gone. I had the same experience with out…

There are two main reasons to outsource: reduce cost & focus on core business. By outsourcing a developer position, a company may not have to be engaged in most of the process of hiring someone else in that geography (It has a cost), there is also the inherit admin cost associated with maintaining the pipeline of developers to cover for the high turn-over, the need of finance/HR/ops professionals, etc from that geography.

In essence, unless a company intends to have major offices in the region and that it may be interested in becoming an outsourcing agency in the future, it may not make sense business wise.

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#68

Post by Krasnol »

mothsonasloth wrote: post #42

[Controversial post] This is what happens when you treat "IT" as a cost centre and outsource it to India with TCS, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Accenture etc. In the case of BA; its Tata Consultancy Service (TCS). I can't comment on outsourcing to Phillipines, Ukraine or Malaysia. I've worked with two companies that did their outsourcing to India and it was a shitshow. First and foremost there is the cultural barrier, sure…

IBM calling.

We had IT support outsourced for all (almost. some branch with government contracts was able to resist) our F500 companies offices. Local IT was let go and replaced by freelancers that have been hired by a company IBM outsourced local IT to.

So we're having: IBM (India) -> outsourcing company (local country) -> freelancers

The local freelancers obviously have no idea, experience or even motivation to stay at the job following phone orders from the operators in India.

This works if you have to do minor things like install a program on a client PC or similar. It becomes risky and ridiculous at server level.

In the end not even basic support worked. People we expensively recruited left because the laptop they've been provided did not work with the company network months later. System outages stretching throughout the continents or even worldwide. Customer satisfaction falling. Angry employees.

The guy who initiated the deal left the company. Probably with a nice bonus from IBM and management is stuck with the situation instead of dropping the contract comes up with useless justifications that are probably delivered to them by IBM.

In the end what might have looked good on that excel sheet ( IT staff salaries vs. IBM contract), causes costs that are not easily put into numbers (we had an account where we could charge time that was wasted due to IT issues. It was closed within a few weeks).

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#70

Post by trilila »

newsgremlin wrote: post #43
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?

Legacy software and outsourcing to consultants or contractors. I think that's the story for most organisations in the UK - not willing to invest in having a dedicated team of in-house developers. Meanwhile developers are like nomads and are on the move to the better paid jobs and/or the better tech stack and better workloads. Lot of new graduates coming through but still not enough to meet demands in the market. Trai…

Funny you mention that. Most contractors I worked with and have worked at the likes of BA and banks complained about permanent employees resistant to change, and being out of date in terms of practices used, bureaucracy and "not my problem" kind of attitudes. Obviously, the most incompetent complained about contractors as they would get a way higher daily rate, while most of those permies struggle to find a job even tho the market is an employee market.
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