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

Post by bryanrasmussen » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 8:03 AM UTC

dpifke wrote: post #166

dkonofalski wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the scraping is happening "on-device", though, then they're not providing their details to a third party. They're simply accessing their schedules. Otherwise, pulling up their schedules in any web browser would be considered giving their credentials to a third party since that's basically what's happening here. It would be like logging in to the aa.com employee site and then installing a Chrome extension that read…

It might be possible to build this app in a way that none of the information ever leaves the device. I would be very surprised if that was the case here. Most large IT departments have a list of approved browsers and browser extensions. The scenario you described would fall under the same policy. If Chrome uploaded the content of intranet web pages to Google, I expect it would be banned as well.

Post by vikingerik » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 4:32 PM UTC

glonq wrote: post #195

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…

I wish more people realized that HR, IT, and accounting are secondary services within a corporation. They aren't the core of the company. The people inventing, building, and selling widgets are the core. Everybody else is just a necessary evil that exists to help facilitate and streamline the stuff that matters. Employees should not be bending over backwards to suit HR and IT workflows and policies. Policymakers shou…

Post by sidewndr46 » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 10:24 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #241

pc86 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a top-level comment higher up that lists the individual features. One is notably absent from AA's internal systems: checking that FA schedules are consistent with the regulations governing how much they can work. But the crux of it is that is takes the FA's AA credentials, collects their personal data from disparate internal AA systems, and displays it in a sane way to the FA. And presumably at least a coupl…

As someone who is currently consulting on an airline industry project, you are absolutely correct in identifying how terrible the internal legacy systems are. Everything is built on SABRE, which was first created in 1960 and absolutely shows its age. If SABRE was a person, it could retire. What's worse though is that inside the industry there's little awareness of the possibility of doing things differently. Everythi…

Post by fknorangesite » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 11:52 PM UTC

sidewndr46 wrote: post #256

fknorangesite wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if they're like pilots (who are typically only paid on time from wheels up to touchdown) that is likely an unpaid hour. The same is true of flight attendants; they are paid from door close to door open. All that boarding and deplaning time is unpaid.

There's been at least one incident where I spent hours sitting on a runway after landing. The pilot was professionally, but obviously very agitated. Does the crew not get paid for that time?