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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

#111

Post by t0mas88 »

14113 wrote: post #38
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 test…

As a pilot, I'm really sorry about the state of infrastructure at the destinations, but we need fax or phone sometimes.

For context: Imagine a crew room, with an old yellow looking windows 95 machine as the only "IT service" and only GSM-speed (or no reception at all) mobile internet in the area. The machine doesn't really work, or is on a dialup connection (yes this still exists).

These are the cases where we use the phone, or write the plan manually on a form and fax that. The phone has a high risk of mistakes, because you're reading lots of numbers and codes so it's easy to misunderstand one.

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#112

Post by isostatic »

biztos wrote: post #96
tialaramex wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you're responding to _is_ a government regulation. Specifically the EU's regulation 261/2004. The EU has both Regulations (like this) and Directives. A Directive says that member governments need to make a law that achieves something, but leaves it to them to figure out the details. A Regulation (like 261/2004) doesn't leave it to national government, it's the same across the entire EU. BA were required (as…

I wonder, has BA (or any other airline) or the UK government said what the rules for this will be after Brexit? I have a hard time imagining, say, EasyJet doing any sort of compensation they aren't required by law to do.

BA are more penny pinching than Easyjet.

As with all things brexit, the goal is to remove our rights

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/flight-delay-compens...

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#113

Post by isostatic »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #97
tialaramex wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you're responding to _is_ a government regulation. Specifically the EU's regulation 261/2004. The EU has both Regulations (like this) and Directives. A Directive says that member governments need to make a law that achieves something, but leaves it to them to figure out the details. A Regulation (like 261/2004) doesn't leave it to national government, it's the same across the entire EU. BA were required (as…

What are the penalties for the regulations? Because without sufficiently high costs, the airline has no incentive to comply.

Most enforcement action has been around the compensation part rather than the duty of care part

There has been enforcement action though

https://www.caa.co.uk/News/CAA-s-enforcement-action-reaffirm...

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#114

Post by philpem »

tialaramex wrote: post #102
teachrdan wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing might be acceptable if the airline were transparent about it: "This 90 person flight will be overbooked by up to 10 people. Based on data over the last 12 months, there is a 5% chance one or more people in your party of 4 will be involuntarily forced to wait for the next flight, which is 3 hours later. That would lead you to missing your connecting flight, resulting in a total delay of at least…

You either don't understand how involuntarily bumping passengers works, or you don't understand what moral hazard is, or perhaps both. The airline has to compensate bumped passengers as well as rearranging their flight. It's the same as cancelling the flight as far as that passenger is concerned. As you see in other threads the EU requires up to €600 per passenger monetary compensation as well as any other needs. Far…

Legally they have to, yes -- but BA's tactic for avoiding this is for all the desk staff to mysteriously go on an extended break when a delayed flight arrives...

You call the helpdesk to be told "speak to airport staff at the BA desk".

... see above. :)

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#115

Post by fuzz4lyfe »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #75
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 agree with most of your points. However, these two stuck out to me: > Fourthly, when the offshoring occurs, the transmission of knowledge sharing is very hard. The local people who are being let go won't be too facilitating in this documentation as well which is understandable. This sounds like a setting expectations issue. Developers are expected to write code, write tests, and troubleshoot issues. Why not also ex…

>This sounds like a setting expectations issue. Developers are expected to write code, write tests, and troubleshoot issues. Why not also expect them to produce written documentation?

They often do, when sysadmins say "There is no documentation" doesn't mean that there is literally no documentation it's often the documentation looks like this: "Set up a cron job and have it fire every few minutes" instead of "login to the server located at 192.168.1.25 via SSH using the administrator credentials located in the password manager and type chrontab -e..."

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#116

Post by 14113 »

t0mas88 wrote: post #111
14113 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 test…

As a pilot, I'm really sorry about the state of infrastructure at the destinations, but we need fax or phone sometimes. For context: Imagine a crew room, with an old yellow looking windows 95 machine as the only "IT service" and only GSM-speed (or no reception at all) mobile internet in the area. The machine doesn't really work, or is on a dialup connection (yes this still exists). These are the cases where we use th…

That's a much more reasonable explanation - thanks, I appreciate it! The way I'd had it explained to me was more along the lines of "greedy pilots want to be able to fax because they can't be bothered to learn how to use email", but your explanation makes a lot more sense.

Re: British Airways passengers facing delays after IT failures

#117

Post by 14113 »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #83
14113 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 test…

But any network airline has the same legacy issue and needs to connect to the same, relatively ancient, reservation systems. Of all major metwork carriers it really seems to be BA with an annual complete shitshow of their IT systems.

Well maybe the other carriers have less awful legacy tech - I can't speak for what they have. All I know is what I saw while working at BA.
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