Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed • Hacker News Board

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#261

Post by dotancohen » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 6:00 AM UTC

baggy_trough wrote: post #238

thepasswordis wrote: post #232

There is currently a major outage at a major part of the infrastructure of our nation, and nobody believes anybody about why. The airline is saying it's something to do with weather, but somehow they're the only airline effected. Everybody online seems to the think it's some sort of labor strike, but the union denies this and nobody can find anywhere where people are planning this. And yet thousands of people are stu…

When a nation becomes dysfunctional enough, it’s no longer possible to tell the truth.

My /. sig for years:

  > It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

That said, I don't think that the government is wrong here.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#262

Post by noduerme » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 6:03 AM UTC

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #191

noduerme wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's learning COBOL language that's the hard part. An inexperienced programmer who hasn't worked on financial systems is going to make security mistakes and write buggy code for awhile, both of which can be deadly to a bank. But it would be better to have that person rewrite the infrastructure than try to fix bugs. The problem with these ancient systems is trying to understand how bugs arise from subtle…

Eh, someone's got to do it. Letting thing stagnate in perpetuity isn't cheap either. Move slowly and write tests.

Sure, but a veteran coder at least understands that tampering with something may affect some other subsystem you don't even know exists until it breaks... which you wouldn't even think to test. The idea of throwing the phone staff into COBOL instead of them learning Python just obfuscates the real problem which isn't that the language is uncool and dying but that the systems are like the rules of the NFL. They stopped making sense a long time ago to anyone who wasn't immersed and paying attention.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#263

Post by bobthepanda » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 6:06 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #168

hnburnsy wrote: post #36

Comment from the Southwest Pilots Union... >SWA has claimed that the immediate causes of this weekend’s meltdown were staffing at Jacksonville Center and weather in the southeast U.S., but what was a minor temporary event for other carriers devastated Southwest Airlines because our operation has become brittle and subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure. Our operation and our frontline employees have…

> our operation has become brittle and subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure I somehow notice a lot of this lately, in many different areas. I wonder if there isn't a common cause behind those. Is it just covid or something bigger?

Southwest is literally the poster child of low cost carriers. They started the whole business model, which consists of a few things:

* they operate literally one type of aircraft, and therefore only have to train their crew once, keep the specific set of parts, etc.

* they optimize the hell out of making sure their planes are in use carrying paying passengers for the maximum amount of time

* they fly a vast network of point to point using secondary airports, as opposed to coordinating at massive hubs

These are all things that would make recovering from a massive widespread disruption very hard, and Southwest has been doing it better and longer than anybody else.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#264

Post by twofornone » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 6:09 AM UTC

downandout wrote: post #250

thepasswordis wrote: post #232

There is currently a major outage at a major part of the infrastructure of our nation, and nobody believes anybody about why. The airline is saying it's something to do with weather, but somehow they're the only airline effected. Everybody online seems to the think it's some sort of labor strike, but the union denies this and nobody can find anywhere where people are planning this. And yet thousands of people are stu…

The most likely explanation is here [1]. Pilots (and apparently some air traffic controllers) are doing a sickout to protest vaccine mandates, presumably to make the powers that be understand just how difficult they can make things for the country if they proceed with intended mass firings. But the sickout is technically illegal, so nobody will acknowledge it. That is why you won't see a clear explanation of this inc…

The downvotes on this site have gotten insane. This is a perfectly rational comment. Whether you agree with them or not, just burying your hand and refusing to acknowledge that a nontrivial percentage of workers oppose mandates is just asinine. Boneheaded authoritarianism.

If you ever wondered how horrors like the soviet union and nazi germany are possible, take a look at the religious groupthink that has seemingly consumed multiple first world democracies, over a virus with a 99% survival rate. Suddenly americans are cheering on censorship and authoritarianism and refuse to question their mass hysteria; it's high time you paused and asked yourselves if you're the baddies.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#265

Post by hannasanarion » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 6:10 AM UTC

downandout wrote: post #250

thepasswordis wrote: post #232

There is currently a major outage at a major part of the infrastructure of our nation, and nobody believes anybody about why. The airline is saying it's something to do with weather, but somehow they're the only airline effected. Everybody online seems to the think it's some sort of labor strike, but the union denies this and nobody can find anywhere where people are planning this. And yet thousands of people are stu…

The most likely explanation is here [1]. Pilots (and apparently some air traffic controllers) are doing a sickout to protest vaccine mandates, presumably to make the powers that be understand just how difficult they can make things for the country if they proceed with intended mass firings. But the sickout is technically illegal, so nobody will acknowledge it. That is why you won't see a clear explanation of this inc…

The tweet you linked is an account that's linked to at least one disinformation farm.

Think about it for two seconds, if that really happened, there would be hundreds of witnesses, everybody would be talking about the flight number, there would be cell phone videos and corporate social media responses. None of those things exist, so either everybody on the plane, the airport, and all their friends and relatives are in on the conspiracy except this one bot account, or they're making shit up to stir up conservatives, which is what they've done all day every day since joining the site in January 2017.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#266

Post by sofixa » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 6:11 AM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #218

hodgesrm wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Southwest runs 3 to 4K commercial flights per day, which is about 1 in 7 commercial flights overall in the US. They depend on aircraft doing many short hops over the course of a single day: 7 or 8 is not uncommon. When things go bad it tends to disrupt the system very badly. These numbers come from the US DOT ontime database. You can access the data in ClickHouse at https://github.demo.trial.altinity.cloud:8443 (user…

This seems like a strategy designed to kill airframes via sheer number of pressurization cycles?

Nope, it's how short-haul single-aisle aircraft are operated. They make money only when operating a flight, and the more you can squeeze in a day, the more money it will make.

That's why their life in years is usually significantly lower than medium/long-haul multi-aisle aircraft, which often get converted to freighters after retirement, since the main thing that matters is number of pressurisation cycles ( and fuel efficiency, but it's whole different story).

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#267

Post by miles » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 6:11 AM UTC

thepasswordis wrote: post #232

There is currently a major outage at a major part of the infrastructure of our nation, and nobody believes anybody about why. The airline is saying it's something to do with weather, but somehow they're the only airline effected. Everybody online seems to the think it's some sort of labor strike, but the union denies this and nobody can find anywhere where people are planning this. And yet thousands of people are stu…

Southwest Airlines, passengers claim different causes for cancellations https://www.khou.com/article/news/national/southwest-airline...

> The nationwide cancellations came as the airline announced Monday that the company will now require employees to get the COVID-19 vaccinated by Dec. 8.

> Some customers said they were told the cancellations are a direct result of the vaccine mandate.

> “I asked them specifically 'is this about weather' – because if it’s about weather, they can deny compensation. They said 'no, it’s not about weather.' I said 'is this about maintenance?' They said 'no, it’s not about maintenance.' I said then 'what is the problem?'" passenger Ron Frank said. “They said this is all because of the vaccine mandate. They said we had a massive walkout. They also said that air traffic control had a massive walkout because of the vaccine mandate. But to couch 1,000 cancelations because of a thunderstorm somewhere is not believable.”

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#268

Post by cycrutchfield » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 6:15 AM UTC

mandatethis wrote: post #141

I work in a fortune 100 company. I publicly spoke up at work about mandates being illegal, immoral and an affront to decent society. Especially, when there are alternatives we can provide (such as testing daily). I made a post and shared it across multiple locations in the company. As a people manager, I knew the risks. My post was up only 10 min before being taken down. Eventually, internal HR contacted me and told…

Let me guess, and next somebody started slow-clapping and people started joining in until there was a thunderous ovation? Anything else you want to add to your fanfic?

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#269

Post by downandout » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 6:16 AM UTC

hannasanarion wrote: post #265

downandout wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most likely explanation is here [1]. Pilots (and apparently some air traffic controllers) are doing a sickout to protest vaccine mandates, presumably to make the powers that be understand just how difficult they can make things for the country if they proceed with intended mass firings. But the sickout is technically illegal, so nobody will acknowledge it. That is why you won't see a clear explanation of this inc…

The tweet you linked is an account that's linked to at least one disinformation farm. Think about it for two seconds, if that really happened, there would be hundreds of witnesses, everybody would be talking about the flight number, there would be cell phone videos and corporate social media responses. None of those things exist, so either everybody on the plane, the airport, and all their friends and relatives are i…

I just looked at the account...you are correct, it does seem to be a very right-leaning account, so I deleted the link. The tweet seemed credible, but given the mass-downvoting in this thread, I'll err on the side of caution. Regardless, the tweet was an afterthought, not the main point of the comment.

Re: Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

#270

Post by cycrutchfield » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 6:17 AM UTC

angelzen wrote: post #156

mandatethis wrote: post #141

I work in a fortune 100 company. I publicly spoke up at work about mandates being illegal, immoral and an affront to decent society. Especially, when there are alternatives we can provide (such as testing daily). I made a post and shared it across multiple locations in the company. As a people manager, I knew the risks. My post was up only 10 min before being taken down. Eventually, internal HR contacted me and told…

May decency prevail. I stumbled recently on an interesting chart. Have not doublecheck the math, but comes from FinancialTimes, so I expect it to be credible. Bottom line, you need to vaccinate between 800 (60+yo) and 25,000 ( https://www.ft.com/content/3439145a-80a4-47ad-9ceb-54a0cb707...

Yes, when seeking medical advice I also generally turn to the Financial Times for cogent analysis.