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Southwest Airlines grounds flights due to computer outage

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Re: Southwest Airlines grounds flights due to computer outage

#11

Post by coolhandluke »

eksith wrote: post #3
hkmurakami wrote: post #2

Man I always underestimate the reach and extent of software, especially in enterprise. It really is everywhere. As an aside, does anyone know if such things like ticketing systems are developed in house or are outsourced to places like, say, IBM?

More than likely outsourced, but probably not from places like IBM. I recall there was a rental car company that used Unisys systems and I believe all custom software.

The original software was from IBM, if memory serves, although I believe Southwest modified it extensively.

Re: Southwest Airlines grounds flights due to computer outage

#12

Post by x0x0 »

coolhandluke wrote: post #10
penland wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for Southwest as recently as last year. In the industry, ALL reservation and ticketing systems are written by specialists. The major players are Sabre ( think IBM ) / Navitaire / ITA ( which was bought by Google not too long ago ). Southwest is a great company, and they pay well, but their engineering staff is made up of the neckbeard brigade . . . lots of guys in their 50s that have either retired before re…

> The reservation system itself runs on old school IBM big iron written in C. The system is so damn old that when you go southwest.com, all the information retrieved is done via screen scraping. Man, say what you will about old mainframes and critical systems and C and COBOL versus racks of commodity x86 boxes and Java and Ruby and "scaling out" and load balancers and reverse proxies and ..., but those old business a…

Can we all agree that your point (while well taken)... is really really funny in light of the subject of this article? I'd say this was a pretty spectacular instance of just not working.

Re: Southwest Airlines grounds flights due to computer outage

#13

Post by ghshephard »

x0x0 wrote: post #12
coolhandluke wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reservation system itself runs on old school IBM big iron written in C. The system is so damn old that when you go southwest.com, all the information retrieved is done via screen scraping. Man, say what you will about old mainframes and critical systems and C and COBOL versus racks of commodity x86 boxes and Java and Ruby and "scaling out" and load balancers and reverse proxies and ..., but those old business a…

Can we all agree that your point (while well taken)... is really really funny in light of the subject of this article? I'd say this was a pretty spectacular instance of just not working.

Well - a lot depends on what part failed - was it the backend big iron, or the front end scraping system?

Re: Southwest Airlines grounds flights due to computer outage

#15

Post by eli »

furyg3 wrote: post #14

"Some flights were on the taxiway and diverted back to the terminal after the problem was detected" Why? You've checked these guys in, the baggage is loaded, the pilots (presumably) know where they are flying to... why would you pull them back in?

Unable to calculate the weigh of the plane perhaps?

Re: Southwest Airlines grounds flights due to computer outage

#16

Post by a3n »

furyg3 wrote: post #14

"Some flights were on the taxiway and diverted back to the terminal after the problem was detected" Why? You've checked these guys in, the baggage is loaded, the pilots (presumably) know where they are flying to... why would you pull them back in?

The business is probably so computer-dependent that the business is essentially the software systems executing. Planes flying, at this point, are mere physical side effects of software systems executing. If your systems aren't executing, your business isn't running.

Add in probable regulatory requirements that are also implemented by software, and that probably makes it illegal to fly.

Re: Southwest Airlines grounds flights due to computer outage

#17

Post by neurotech1 »

a3n wrote: post #16
furyg3 wrote: post #14

"Some flights were on the taxiway and diverted back to the terminal after the problem was detected" Why? You've checked these guys in, the baggage is loaded, the pilots (presumably) know where they are flying to... why would you pull them back in?

The business is probably so computer-dependent that the business is essentially the software systems executing. Planes flying, at this point, are mere physical side effects of software systems executing. If your systems aren't executing, your business isn't running. Add in probable regulatory requirements that are also implemented by software, and that probably makes it illegal to fly.

It may have been relating to the Pilot Operating Handbook procedures the Airlines' Air Operators Certificate requires.

They still have the means to manually calculate the weight/balance etc. Some (most?) airlines require the pilots to do a manual cross-check worksheet of the fuel, weight/balance and a few other safety of flight items, before they take-off. This helps avoids mistakes like over-rotation on takeoff etc.

One particularly amusing case was in a 767, where the Captain handed a copy of the worksheet to a young girl who loved math problems, and was travelling in first class as a VIP. The young girl found a mathematical error in the worksheet. It turned out the flight computer had the fuel CG incorrect by 2-3% in certain cases, and both were incorrect.

A quick call to Boeing, and 20 minutes later, fuel transferred and the flight proceeded.

I suspect the Southwest aircraft returning to the gate, was a procedural abort, than a safely-of-flight issue.

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