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Half of European flights delayed due to system failure

bbc.com

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Re: Half of European flights delayed due to system failure

#81

Post by dx034 »

iMerNibor wrote: post #33
jimktrains2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the end of this article state that that may not be in effect for extrodinary circumstances out of the airlines' control?

Most (some?) airlines will just suck up the cost though in those extrodinary circumstances (bad weather for example), as a general policy to keep their customers sane. Not sure if they'll give you direct compensation, but most will pay for food/drink, some place to stay overnight if need be and rebook your flight for free too if it's cancelled outright.

What airlines do you fly with? Comp for hotel and food is paid but the EU comp is really hard to get. There's a reason that so many services specialise on getting that money for passengers for a fee. It's not just Ryanair and Easyjet making it hard to claim. Haven't heard of a single case where reasons as that one led to a payout.

Re: Half of European flights delayed due to system failure

#82

Post by easytiger »

iMerNibor wrote: post #33
jimktrains2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the end of this article state that that may not be in effect for extrodinary circumstances out of the airlines' control?

Most (some?) airlines will just suck up the cost though in those extrodinary circumstances (bad weather for example), as a general policy to keep their customers sane. Not sure if they'll give you direct compensation, but most will pay for food/drink, some place to stay overnight if need be and rebook your flight for free too if it's cancelled outright.

> Most (some?) airlines will just suck up the cost though in those extrodinary circumstances (bad weather for example), as a general policy to keep their customers sane

not even remotely true

Re: Half of European flights delayed due to system failure

#83

Post by mseebach »

AceyMan wrote: post #65
userbinator wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard of enough misguided "modernisations" (and failures thereof) that I think the "legacy system" was the part that stayed working throughout, and it's the newer stuff added around it that failed. The old stuff may be old but there's a reason it's old... it's outlasted any attempts at replacing it.

>it's outlasted any attempt to replace it See, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect (my fave citation from everyone's fave source for non-academic citations)

The counteracting force to that will be that they complexity of the surrounding environment increases and becomes more brittle, or is just simply in the way, as constantly increasing demands for new features drifts further from the capabilities of the old system in the middle.

A few years ago, SAS introduced a new status tier. It took 18 months to introduce into the system (Amadeus). The system may be stable, but those kinds of turn around times for a minor customer service change simply isn't feasible. I don't have numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if one of the reasons upstart airlines such as EasyJet are competitive is that their IT is comparatively modern and can actively support the organisation while IT is more of a millstone around the legacy airlines' necks.

Re: Half of European flights delayed due to system failure

#84

Post by kylegordon »

matte_black wrote: post #66
kylegordon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your 'Merkin is showing. Wrong again. You deal with the airline. Not the 'government' If the airline does you wrong, at that point the CAA takes it up on your behalf. CAA ~= FAA

I have no desire to deal with an airline that has already fucked up a flight, and is probably already swamped. As soon as they give me the options for the next flight, I’ll take my own taxi, get my own hotel, and have Chase pick up the tab.

Whatever floats your boat.

It's clearly a fundamental cultural difference. An inherent distrust of government and corporations, along with a willingness to pay to avoid issues, compared to, well, a modicum of trust in government, and an established legal framework that protects the customer from the corporation.

I've been on the receiving end of delayed flights too. The agent was polite and simply offered me an alternative flight, or the compensation/refund, all at the desk. There was no animosity or distrust, just "here's what we both have to do".

Re: Half of European flights delayed due to system failure

#86

Post by colechristensen »

dx034 wrote: post #76
makmanalp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be fascinating to read about what bug took down a system with one outage in 20 years. I remember reading in the chubby paper (from google) that user error was the cause of more than half the downtime incidents. Wonder if that's the case here too.

If I remember correctly, a similar outage in the UK was due to increased flight volumes. The system had a hardcoded limit somewhere which caused issues as flight volume increased. The software was old enough that they weren't aware of that issue beforehand. I could imagine something similar happening here. It definitely shows how well software can work with the right practices. Only one outage in 20 years and that on…

Anyone could, few care to. They really are the wrong practices for a whole lot of things. The level of care, design, and verification just isn't necessary for applications with few or fixable consequences.

It is a bit sad that nearly nothing these days strives for that kind of excellence.

Re: Half of European flights delayed due to system failure

#87

Post by colechristensen »

makmanalp wrote: post #73
tim333 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I recall last year "BA’s £150,000,000 outage was caused by someone turning computers on and off too quickly" I think companies often try to stay quite about the dumb stuff.

Well - I wouldn't call it dumb stuff. After all, it's only a matter of time one of us does something truly stupid :-) Even more so when under stress and pressure when shit hits the fan, which is usually when human operators have to intervene. It's part of building reliable systems to reduce the chances of operator error. See: the Hawaii missile alert bug! It must be truly terrifying to sit at that particular keyboard…

Read "Inviting Disaster" for a lot more about this topic.

Many very high profile disasters were caused by operator error or more precisely complex systems not designed for what you might call failure ergonomics.

Re: Half of European flights delayed due to system failure

#88

Post by isostatic »

jwbensley wrote: post #85
jwbensley wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not brain surgery!

Whats with the downvotes? That guys username is and my comment are both references to a TV show.

Decade old UK tv series on BBC two? I imagine most have never heard of it.

I was thinking more of an even older show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn2FB1P_Mn8

Re: Half of European flights delayed due to system failure

#89

Post by AndrewDucker »

jwbensley wrote: post #85
jwbensley wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not brain surgery!

Whats with the downvotes? That guys username is and my comment are both references to a TV show.

That may be part of the problem.

Silly jokes don't go down well on HN, as they're distractions from the conversation. It's considered "Reddit-like" behaviour, and discouraged through downvotes.

Re: Half of European flights delayed due to system failure

#90

Post by isostatic »

newnewpdro wrote: post #26
isostatic wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Sure, the skies are more and more crowded, meaning more and more people will be affected by a once-in-20 year failure, but why would it happen more and more common?

If the reliability stays constant expressed as a rate (arguably optimistic), like ".1% failure per X flights", and the # of flights increases, then failures become more frequent. Failure rates must decrease proportionally to the utilization/capacity increase for the # of failures to stay constant. Otherwise, the # of failures will naturally increase, it's simple multiplication. For example: If crime rates stay consta…

You're assuming the failure rate is related to the number of flights. With 2 failures in 20 years there's not really enough data to extrapolate.

And remember this wasn't a complete system outage - it affected 50% of flights, a degraded service.

In comparison the vast majority of startups that HN people work in will be lucky to last 2 years. In the last 10 years Gmail has been down, well not sure. It was down 6 times in one year. Uptime is apparently 99.8%, or down for 175 hours a decade, so 6 hours seems quite reliable.

Level 3 went down last month. And in 2016. And in 2015.

Having a system having to work for decades without downtime is unheard of in the web world, even in simple systems like gmail and AWS.

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