British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash
1–10 of 255 posts
Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash
#2I feel close to their IT staff having to deal with this on a Saturday afternoon.
Partially OT: anyone wanting to share any on-call horror stories? :)
Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash
#3Shopping, flight status, etc, on their website is working, so their central reservations system isn't down.
http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-40069977 says "A BA captain has said the failure affects the passenger and baggage manifests"
So it's an legality/operational thing. Passengers can get boarding passes, etc, but the plane isn't allowed to take off without proper manifests.
Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash
#4Shopping, flight status, etc, on their website is working, so their central reservations system isn't down. http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-40069977 says "A BA captain has said the failure affects the passenger and baggage manifests" So it's an legality/operational thing. Passengers can get boarding passes, etc, but the plane isn't allowed to take off without proper manifests.
If that's true then it's probably their operations system, i.e. flight management, digital flight bag, etc. Without those systems you can't file flight plans easily, fuel the planes with the optimal amount for the weather conditions, etc.
Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash
#5Shopping, flight status, etc, on their website is working, so their central reservations system isn't down. http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-40069977 says "A BA captain has said the failure affects the passenger and baggage manifests" So it's an legality/operational thing. Passengers can get boarding passes, etc, but the plane isn't allowed to take off without proper manifests.
If that's true then it's probably their operations system, i.e. flight management, digital flight bag, etc. Without those systems you can't file flight plans easily, fuel the planes with the optimal amount for the weather conditions, etc.
I would guess some component of what they call "Departure Control".
Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash
#6I feel close to their IT staff having to deal with this on a Saturday afternoon. Partially OT: anyone wanting to share any on-call horror stories? :)
Airlines are especially stressful, as the problem compounds with time. Once you hit 45 minutes or so of downtime, you start invalidating downstream flight connections. Two hours in, and you've issues with crews not being legal to fly. Four hours in, and there's not enough capacity the following day to fix the missed flights from today, etc.
Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash
#7I feel close to their IT staff having to deal with this on a Saturday afternoon. Partially OT: anyone wanting to share any on-call horror stories? :)
Airlines are especially stressful, as the problem compounds with time. Once you hit 45 minutes or so of downtime, you start invalidating downstream flight connections. Two hours in, and you've issues with crews not being legal to fly. Four hours in, and there's not enough capacity the following day to fix the missed flights from today, etc.
are there commonly algos or decision support tools to help unravel that in an optimised way?
Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Airlines are especially stressful, as the problem compounds with time. Once you hit 45 minutes or so of downtime, you start invalidating downstream flight connections. Two hours in, and you've issues with crews not being legal to fly. Four hours in, and there's not enough capacity the following day to fix the missed flights from today, etc.
are there commonly algos or decision support tools to help unravel that in an optimised way?
I suspect that there's a lot of eating crow and bargaining with rivals for space on their flights to help clear the backlog, but each incident is going to have unique elements to resolve in it...
Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Airlines are especially stressful, as the problem compounds with time. Once you hit 45 minutes or so of downtime, you start invalidating downstream flight connections. Two hours in, and you've issues with crews not being legal to fly. Four hours in, and there's not enough capacity the following day to fix the missed flights from today, etc.
are there commonly algos or decision support tools to help unravel that in an optimised way?
Sort of. The software is called "automated re-accommodation". But you're solving for several intertwined problems. Which aircraft models / tail numbers fly which flights...they have different seating capacities, nautical range, etc. Which crews are assigned to which aircraft. They aren't all qualified to fly every model. And, they aren't all in the right city, so you have to "deadhead" them there. And, finally, which passengers go on which flights.
They do have solver/optimizer algorithms, but you can imagine it's not a button press thing. There's a lot of human process, trial and error, etc. Oh, and federal laws about crew hours / legality plus union work rules. You can't just assign crews wherever you want for example...you have to consider seniority, their "home base" where they live, etc.
Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash
#10The main KPI for BA's IT function is the percentage of jobs they have moved "nearshore" (to Krakow).
Not that I think this is the Krakow workers' fault, mind you; rather this (and the string of similar IT incidents recently at BA) seems to fit the pattern of upper management focusing on driving down costs to the exclusion of everything else.