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Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

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

#511

Post by riffic »

riffic wrote: post #31
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #19

Seeing stories like this makes me wonder if we'll ever see a company actually go bust based purely on the instability of its decades-old, duct-taped architecture. I have a relative who works for a large credit card processor running on mainframe systems and I hear over and over again that they're all retiring and unable to fill the newly opened roles. This problem is compounded by the fact that their offshore contrac…

> decades-old, duct-taped architecture The way the survivorship bias works out, this is generally a strength, not a weakness. You want to get good money, you learn how stuff works under the hood and get familiar with your predecessor architectures, emulate them if you need to.

A reply to myself since I can't edit: Survivorship bias may not completely describe what I'm talking about here but another commenter posted about Lindy Effect, which is 100% on the nose:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

These systems are in place and will continue to be maintained simply because they've stood the test of time.

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

#512

Post by toss1 »

Zigurd wrote: post #433
jeffreygoesto wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't this the exact point of operation, controlling and finance in any large corporation wants to find? Extract from bottom to the top until it breaks and then hope to steer back a tiny little bit and keep operating in that state? Finance never did produce, it's whole purpose is to extract. Run a gasoline engine to lean and it will start to heat and stutter... As for the growth, in a peaceful society you can gro…

Naive finance works that way. Sophisticated finance prices-in downside risk.

Yes, but with finance based on transitory MBA executive suites job-hopping around the corporate world, the right play is to price in the risk during your term and a bit after, so the 10-year risk is ignored, but if you can strip everything out of redundancy, product development, etc., the numbers will look better for a while, you get your bonus package, and move to the next opportunity/victim.

When things have been built to last, there is a lot of "fat" that can be cut - for a while.

The numbers will always look better - until they don't.

When the music stops, the "lean" "financial engineers" will be long gone, and those still there will have not the slightest clue how to re-start a culture of serious product/service development or robust operations, and the corp falls into a death spiral.

If you are a trader, you DGAF.

If you are an investor, watch for numbers improving without product and operations improving, and new markets being opened.

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

#513

Post by cronix »

ceejayoz wrote: post #499
anarticle wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to clarify this YouTube link: HEK293 cells are used in TONS of research, yes they are derived from fetal cell lines in the 70s. When I say tons, I mean if you say "HEK cells" to someone who does any cell culture they know what you're talking about. It is completely noncontroversial, and cancer/bioenergetic research utilizes them. I don't appreciate this YouTube channel doing what they are doing, it is pouring fu…

> I don't appreciate this YouTube channel doing what they are doing, it is pouring fuel on a giant nothingburger. That's their MO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas

Wikipedia says about using wikipedia:

> Wikipedia can be a great tool for learning and researching information. However, as with all reference works, Wikipedia is not considered to be a reliable source as not everything in Wikipedia is accurate, comprehensive, or unbiased.

So, there's also that to consider.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wik...

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

#514

Post by native_samples »

ceejayoz wrote: post #504
native_samples wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biologically and chemically but not liability-wise, which makes no sense, and is exactly the point the throwaway is making.

That's a false claim, too. They are identical from a liability standpoint. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/30/false-cla... > Indeed, contrary to the claims of Malone and others, the Comirnaty vaccine has the same liability protection as the vaccine approved under the EUA. That’s because of a law known as the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act). > In early 2020, after the coronav…

i.e. there is no liability for either of them? The point of granting full approval was so the government could claim that it is no longer be considered 'experimental'. Normally that means the usual liability rules kick in. If not because the usual rules are overridden by other rules elsewhere it would appear the approval was pointless and changed nothing.

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

#515

Post by crackercrews »

brandmeyer wrote: post #402
unionemployee wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pilots in the US are an extremely conservative bunch. On my pilot group's FB page, the number of times I've read "Let's go Brandon!" in response to this supposed sickout are numerous. Every trip I hear the far-right Breitbart, Newsmax media narrative, and links from similar pseudo news blog sites are posted all the time. It's impossible to fly to SFO or LAX without a comment on homelessness, taxes, liberals, etc. Onc…

> On my pilot group's FB page Social media has optimized the process of finding groups of people that think just exactly like you do. The fact that you are listening to one specific echo chamber that feels this way does not tell you that the entire industry feels this way. Consider the following counter-example: United Airlines also has a vaccine mandate, and got well over 99% compliance.

> United Airlines also has a vaccine mandate, and got well over 99% compliance.

But how many employees left UA along the way?

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

#516

Post by ceejayoz »

cronix wrote: post #513
ceejayoz wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't appreciate this YouTube channel doing what they are doing, it is pouring fuel on a giant nothingburger. That's their MO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas

Wikipedia says about using wikipedia: > Wikipedia can be a great tool for learning and researching information. However, as with all reference works, Wikipedia is not considered to be a reliable source as not everything in Wikipedia is accurate, comprehensive, or unbiased. So, there's also that to consider. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wik...

That's why you can (and should!) scroll to the bottom of an article and consult the references, if you're unsure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas#References

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

#517

Post by whatthesmack »

bojan wrote: post #350
baumy wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the choice is between 3.5 million dead, and the rise of authoritarianism and censorship, then yes the former is much less tragic than the latter and therefore the more acceptable option. And that's before taking into account that the survival rate is quite a bit higher than 99%, so it won't be 3.5 million dead. And also before taking into account that the vast majority of the dead will be the very old, and people…

What about people who can't get medical care like cancer treatments, because hospitals are full of people unnecessarily ill from COVID?

What about people who can't get medical care like cancer treatments, because hospitals are firing people with natural immunity who don't need (and thus refuse) the vaccine?

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

#518

Post by ceejayoz »

native_samples wrote: post #514
ceejayoz wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a false claim, too. They are identical from a liability standpoint. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/30/false-cla... > Indeed, contrary to the claims of Malone and others, the Comirnaty vaccine has the same liability protection as the vaccine approved under the EUA. That’s because of a law known as the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act). > In early 2020, after the coronav…

i.e. there is no liability for either of them? The point of granting full approval was so the government could claim that it is no longer be considered 'experimental'. Normally that means the usual liability rules kick in. If not because the usual rules are overridden by other rules elsewhere it would appear the approval was pointless and changed nothing.

Whether it's covered under CICP or VICP, we made a national security decision in the 1980s that having companies willing to make vaccines was a net positive, and thus set up a no-fault system funded by a tax on every vaccine dose administered.

Approval was never going to change the liability status. That's not the point of FDA approval.

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

#519

Post by bobthepanda »

ethbr0 wrote: post #458
smsm42 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How operating one type of plane makes recovering from disruption harder? I'd expect it to make it easier - you can replace any crew with any other crew, and any plane with any other plane. Same with secondary airports - I am not sure how it makes recovery harder. Distributed systems are usually more robust against disruption that centralized ones - if you can't fly in an out of the hub, then all your flights in that…

> Distributed systems are usually more robust against disruption that centralized ones Distributed systems can also be more complex to re-converge after a major disruption. I'd imagine it's non-trivial to re-plan a network, given equipment and crew limitations. And as context, we're talking about 24 hours later, now?

Yeah. Part of Southwest‘s high utilization rate is their ability to turn around planes and crew quickly.

In the event of widespread disruption, planes will not make it to their next airport to become a different flight, nor will their crew. Crew can also only be awake and working for a limit of time, so if the disruption causes a crew to go over that limit they are not going out until the next day, etc.

With cloud computing, it‘s a bit different because which host you‘re using in a region doesn‘t really matter, but for airline a specific plane with specific people need to be in a specific time and place.

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

#520

Post by supertrope »

dgb23 wrote: post #292
kortilla wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only “a failure” if the loss from this is worse than all of the money they have saved over the years by running so lean. This type of event is the obvious possible downside that is well known when you structure a company this way. It’s not that events like this aren’t expected, it’s that prepping for them costs more than the loss from not being able to absorb them.

I‘m sure you‘re just describing what is, but... The human element doesn’t matter at all? Their workers are fed up. This tunnel visioning on financial metrics is so superficial and narrow that it makes me angry. A company is a community of interacting, real people, not a video game.

Southwest is one of the better carriers in terms of customer satisfaction and not racing to the lowest fare.
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