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American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

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Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#201

Post by windowsworkstoo »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #170
oxymoron wrote: post #107

I am not convinced that AA is actively trying to block this app. I used to work for a major anti-bot vendor, so from that I know that all airlines suffer heavily from price scraping and try to protect their flight search endpoints. The impact to them is due to fees from the centralized data services that all airlines depend on.

Then how do discount sites like Kayak, Expedia, or Matrix ITA/ Google Flights work without a hitch? The ticket prices are no lower than what SABRE will offer and it doesn't seem like AA is losing money in those cases.

There are API’s, just not public ones - only available under commercial agreement

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#202

Post by yamtaddle »

kleiba wrote: post #156
jmslbam wrote: post #24

Reminds me of those Stockholm parents that built an app by obtaining data, in a legal way, that worked better the the manufactorer build themselfs.... https://www.wired.com/story/sweden-stockholm-school-app-open... :)

Landgren would dig through endless convoluted menus to find out what his children were doing at school. If working out what his children needed in their gym kit was a hassle, then working out how to report them as sick was a nightmare. This seems very removed from my own school days: - find out what the children were doing at school : you couldn't, really, the curricula were not public. You could ask your kids after…

I truly think computerized school communication is worse than notes in backpacks and the occasional mailed letter.

They send way too much useless shit, way too often, so you end up ignoring a lot of it; use way too many channels to do it; design sites poorly—how about the year's calendar on the first page for a given school, above "the fold", with a link to subscribe your preferred calendaring software to it, right there, office contact info off to the side, also above "the fold"? And no horrible excessively-complex half-broken themes making it difficult to navigate? Nah, that'd be too helpful; and everything's in several different systems, all bad, and all in various states of up-to-date or neglected, so it can be hard to guess where you need to look for something and hard to know whether it's accurate when you do find it (especially if the apparent signal is "empty" or "nothing there" or "no information"—is that true, or has it just not been updated lately?)

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#203

Post by acchow »

pb7 wrote: post #115
dcdc123 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never had an uneventful flight on American. I avoid them even if it costs me more time and money.

Everyone has “that story” about one particular airline but AA is particularly bad because a large portion of their fleet is old and requires a lot of maintenance which unsurprisingly causes delays and cancelations. I echo the statement that I’ve never had an uneventful flight on AA. I fly a lot and can confidently say other major airlines are more reliable but usually also more expensive.

This is why I’ll only book an AA flight on newer metal. It’s overall a smoother experience.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#204

Post by RockRobotRock »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #137
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #103

"One flight attendant said of the current situation affecting Sequence Decoder that they had “never seen a company go out of their way to make life harder for their workers.”" Every large company I've worked for had an IT department (or similar) that intentionally made developers'/sysadmins' lives harder. They don't care. So the good people leave, morale drops, productivity drops, management starts implementing crap…

Our IT security people give every impression that their preferred solution would be to drop all the computers in the river and lock the doors. I naively went to them once with a suspected security intrusion event; they threatened to have me arrested. I couldn't convince them that I wasn't the one responsible.

At a previous company I worked, my team (system’s infrastructure) would purposefully avoid the cyber security team, and even attempt to sweep security issues under the rug, because they were so awful to work with.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#205

Post by RockRobotRock »

jdelman wrote: post #145

Reminds me a bit of the dispute between McDonald's/Taylor and Kytch. An independent company Y stepping in to fix a particularly broken aspect of another company X's workflow (or literally a piece of hardware), company X responds badly, company X doesn't have the internal resources to do better, or company X is purposely not fixing things for some dumb and/or profit-motivated reason. A possible solution: build your sc…

This wouldn’t work in the context of a mobile app though.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#206

Post by shagie »

hnburnsy wrote: post #175
shagie wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an extreme example of this: https://kansaspolicy.org/rethinking-taxes-around-remote-work... > Kansas has policies that could deter remote work and are deterring greater interstate work with our neighbors. Kansas requires employer withholding for people working in the state just for one day, which creates an annoying hurdle for companies trying to operate even in a small capacity in Kansas. In 2020, the Kansas legi…

I assumed this was always the case, just that no one except professional athletes actually do it. The CA FTB makes me afraid to take lengthy vacations in California.

https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2020/2020-1031-publication.pdf has the "what establishes residency"

> The term “domicile” has a special legal definition that is not the same as residence. While many states consider domicile and residence to be the same, California makes a distinction and views them as two separate concepts, even though they may often overlap. For instance, you may be domiciled in California but not be a California resident or you may be domiciled in another state but be a California resident for income tax purposes.

> Domicile is defined for tax purposes as the place where you voluntarily establish yourself and family, not merely for a special or limited purpose, but with a present intention of making it your true, fixed, permanent home and principal establishment. It is the place where, whenever you are absent, you intend to return. The maintenance of a marital abode in California is a significant factor in establishing domicile in California.

As long as you're remaining transitory and not staying in a single, fixed, permanent home you should be fine.

Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (takes about two to three months to get out of California) won't establish residency in California.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#207

Post by vkou »

smcl wrote: post #198
Firmwarrior wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (casually implies kids have multiple workout outfits/shoes and regularly engage in expensive outdoor activities) Man, sometimes I'll run into a reminder that I grew up poor as dirt, haha

Ah come on "multiple workout outfits" is a little bit of a stretch of what I said. Everything I described except for the skiing stuff is normal in anything but the very poorest countries - in addition to what you listed, you didn't have a jumper for when it's cold or some old trainers for when it's muddy? I just wore my normal shorts for football whenever we went swimming (fyi my school didn't have a pool, but some d…

Cross-country skiing is cheap and affordable for nearly anyone. All you need is a pair of used skis, a pair of boots, and the ability to bum a ride from a friend.

Downhill skiing is the bourgie hobby.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#208

Post by galonk »

AA sounds like a horrible company. They had a design legacy from when their logo and identity were designed by Massimo Vignelli, but they threw it away and didn't seem to have any concept of its value. Their website has terrible design and usability. When a blogger posted an article about how bad it was, one of the designers at AA reached out anonymously and said they understood his criticisms and that they were working to make the site better. AA searched their mail servers to find that employee and fired them for... caring, I guess?

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#209

Post by vkou »

simsla wrote: post #189
Firmwarrior wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (casually implies kids have multiple workout outfits/shoes and regularly engage in expensive outdoor activities) Man, sometimes I'll run into a reminder that I grew up poor as dirt, haha

If it's any consolation, I grew up in a well off family, and had a single pair of somewhat smelly gym shorts. The swimming trunks argument still holds though.

I grew up in a middle-class family, and as a kid I was generally expected to be aware of when we had a pool day, or a skating rink day coming up, and to be responsible for bringing the right clothing/sundries on every day in school. Using the analog technology of 'remember it', assisted by 'write it down in your day planner'[1].

[1] Which I would never do. My memory, as an eight-year old was, of course, infallible.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#210

Post by YeBanKo »

yamtaddle wrote: post #202
kleiba wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landgren would dig through endless convoluted menus to find out what his children were doing at school. If working out what his children needed in their gym kit was a hassle, then working out how to report them as sick was a nightmare. This seems very removed from my own school days: - find out what the children were doing at school : you couldn't, really, the curricula were not public. You could ask your kids after…

I truly think computerized school communication is worse than notes in backpacks and the occasional mailed letter. They send way too much useless shit, way too often, so you end up ignoring a lot of it; use way too many channels to do it; design sites poorly—how about the year's calendar on the first page for a given school, above "the fold", with a link to subscribe your preferred calendaring software to it, right t…

I fully agree, it is most expensive, less clear and sort of makes it less personal. And a nightmare for privacy. A whatsapp group chat for public announcement and phone calls/texts/meeting with the teacher proves to be more efficient.
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