According to Sky News.
http://news.sky.com/story/british-airwa ... h-10566870

That not going to be fun.

NW and sort of DL were manageable because their effects were mostly in the US, but this is gonna be a huge deal... Maybe a great time for VAt to get some business.

I can imagine the total mess at at LHR.

Not too bad. On board my 08:00 flight LHR to STR - will be a few mins delayed. Yes large queues at bag drop but managed well by the staff. Not the best morning but as one said - I've had worse.

News organisations like to make a crisis out of a drama.

In words of DJ Khaled "another one"

What's with airline IT systems the past few months?

TheFlyingDisk wrote:

What's with airline IT systems the past few months?

Not familiar with BA's system, but many airlines are still running archaic software. While not necessarily the biggest pain point since old software is usually stable after being tested and updated over many many years. However there comes a point where an upgrade might be necessary.

A relevant article from The Economist regarding airline IT systems:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economis ... explains-9

Aeroflot777 wrote:

However there comes a point where an upgrade might be necessary.

It is usually the upgrades that cause the issues

Their site is old as hell so that could be a likely source. Or there are hackers taking down airline systems worldwide.

They've just completed changing to Altea's FLY platform for check-in and related operations (a six month rollout), so nothing at all to do with the age of the software and certainly nothing to do with the design of the website as it was airport check-in that was particularly affected and web check-in is working. Either the migration team failed to spot various bugs, or quite possibly there is some kind of networking fault preventing the airport systems from accessing the servers.

they also outsourced their IT to india laying off a lot of experienced staff i the UK. have also heard they are laying off cargo reservation staff and relocating these jobs also to india.

Tuesday 6 September 2016:

1. British Airways A318 G-EUNB BA4 London Gatwick Diversion. British Airways A318 G-EUNB operating BA4 New York JFK – London City (depart New York JFK 5th September) diverted to London Gatwick this morning due to protestors on the runway at London City.

2. British Airways A318 G-EUNA BA2 London Gatwick Diversion. British Airways A318 G-EUNA operating BA2 New York JFK – London City (depart New York JFK 5th September) diverted to London Gatwick this morning due to protestors on the runway at London City.

3. British Airways Flight Cancellations.
This information is correct at 0915 UTC. If travelling today please check your flight status as ba.com

The following British Airways flights did not operate today:

BA1 London City – Shannon – New York JFK
BA304/BA307 London Heathrow – Paris CDG
BA388/BA391 London Heathrow – Brussels
BA728/BA729 London Heathrow – Geneva
BA974/BA975 London Heathrow – Hamburg
BA1310/BA1311 London Heathrow – Aberdeen
BA2280 Geneva – London City
BA2281 London City – Geneva
BA3270 Dusseldorf – London City
BA3271 London City – Dusseldorf
BA3281 Isle of Man – London City
BA3291 London City – Hamburg
BA3292 Hamburg – London City
BA4451/BA4452 London City – Rotterdam
BA4453 London City – Rotterdam
BA4462/BA4463 London City – Dublin
BA4460 London City – Dublin
BA4461 Dublin – London City
BA8209 Billund – London City
BA8210 London City – Billund
BA8451/BA8452 London City – Amsterdam
BA8471/BA8472 London City – Florence
BA8475/BA8476 London City – Nice
BA8487/BA8488 London City – Malaga
BA8490 Berlin Tegel – London City
BA8491 London City – Berlin Tegel
BA8497/BA8496 London City – Amsterdam
BA8700/BA8703 London City – Edinburgh
BA8702/BA8713 London City – Edinburgh
BA8704/BA8715 London City – Edinburgh
BA8720/BA8739 London City – Glasgow
BA8731 Frankfurt – London City
BA8732 London City – Frankfurt
BA8752 Madrid – London City
BA8753 London City – Madrid
BA8763/BA8764 London City – Zurich.

www.thebasource.com

speedbored wrote:

Aeroflot777 wrote:

However there comes a point where an upgrade might be necessary.

It is usually the upgrades that cause the issues

My days in IT, on a Saturday night/Sunday morning we would implement a "software enhancment" to the system.
By 0900 Sunday morning the phones were banging off the hook.
Translation, Software enhancement = Cock something up that's already working.

Usually means some function believed to be out of scope of change (and thus not tested) was impacted and problems ensued.

These systems are huge and it is not possible to test every function and interfaced system for a basic maintenance (bug fix) release.

It is a fine line that all large companies face.

I have some horrendous stories of things that can go wrong.

Nothing regarding computer outage on BA website...interesting.

http://www.britishairways.com/travel/home/public/en_ca

From the article:

with one in Denver complaining he had "been sat on the plane cooking" for "over 2 hours" and had been forced "to take my trousers off in an effort to cool down".

If it's gonna be that kind of party...

Actually there is:
http://www.britishairways.com/travel/fl ... faqid=5572
It was on the home page all (UK) morning, but as the problem was apparently resolved by mid-morning UK time, about 4 hours ago, there's no longer any need to issue warnings, I imagine.

luftaom wrote:

A relevant article from The Economist regarding airline IT systems:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economis ... explains-9

Nice article but very specific to Delta. Delta is one of a handful of airlines that owns and manages its own reservation system. Most airlines (including BA) have a dedicated airline IT company build and manage the reservation system and eticket database.

Delta's ownership of its own system results in their ability to be innovative on their own schedule (for example Delta's mobile app is light years ahead of most airlines) but at the end of the day Delta isn't an IT company so there are always questions about how effectively they can maintain data centers and ensure proper backups for the instances where the system goes down. One of the benefits of using a dedicated airline IT company (like Sabre or Amadeus) is the economies of scale and dedicated expertise that those companies have.

The part of the article about the legacy systems involved in airline IT is spot on. Airlines still have so many interconnected pieces that when one piece goes down, the whole thing crumbles. For example, your reservation system can be operating perfectly but if your eticket database goes down for a second, flights are basically grounded since customers can't exchange their etickets for a boarding pass. Or if your 3rd party caterer at a large airport has their system go down, flights get major delays because food can't be delivered properly etc.. etc.. The same goes for departure control systems or baggage handlers. All it takes is one component to go down and schedules just melt down.

The whole thing is unfortunately a house of cards but that's just how the industry is built. Frankly, its amazing we don't have more outages, especially in countries with low bandwidth for communications.

declarets wrote:

they also outsourced their IT to india laying off a lot of experienced staff i the UK. have also heard they are laying off cargo reservation staff and relocating these jobs also to india.

BA's airline IT is managed by Amadeus as they use Altea as their reservation system. They can outsource the whole company to India and it wouldn't matter. The actual infrastructure is managed by a French/Spanish company with the majority of employees (on the airline IT side) in Nice and Madrid.

Also this outage sounds like either the DCS is having communication problems or there are issues with retrieving etickets for check in. This isn't a full outage and certainly has nothing to do with where BA has its staff.

klakzky123 wrote:

luftaom wrote:

A relevant article from The Economist regarding airline IT systems:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economis ... explains-9

Nice article but very specific to Delta. Delta is one of a handful of airlines that owns and manages its own reservation system. Most airlines (including BA) have a dedicated airline IT company build and manage the reservation system and eticket database.

Delta's ownership of its own system results in their ability to be innovative on their own schedule (for example Delta's mobile app is light years ahead of most airlines) but at the end of the day Delta isn't an IT company so there are always questions about how effectively they can maintain data centers and ensure proper backups for the instances where the system goes down. One of the benefits of using a dedicated airline IT company (like Sabre or Amadeus) is the economies of scale and dedicated expertise that those companies have.

The part of the article about the legacy systems involved in airline IT is spot on. Airlines still have so many interconnected pieces that when one piece goes down, the whole thing crumbles. For example, your reservation system can be operating perfectly but if your eticket database goes down for a second, flights are basically grounded since customers can't exchange their etickets for a boarding pass. Or if your 3rd party caterer at a large airport has their system go down, flights get major delays because food can't be delivered properly etc.. etc.. The same goes for departure control systems or baggage handlers. All it takes is one component to go down and schedules just melt down.

The whole thing is unfortunately a house of cards but that's just how the industry is built. Frankly, its amazing we don't have more outages, especially in countries with low bandwidth for communications.

I fly Delta a lot. I think their service is fantastic and their operation generally reliable. However, their app it pretty mediocre. I hate using it and often have to go on to their mobile site to get the information I am looking for. Despite all their faults, the United app is amazing and is, in my opinion, the best in the US.

diesel33 wrote:

I fly Delta a lot. I think their service is fantastic and their operation generally reliable. However, their app it pretty mediocre. I hate using it and often have to go on to their mobile site to get the information I am looking for. Despite all their faults, the United app is amazing and is, in my opinion, the best in the US.

I fly Delta as well for most of my travel. To me, the ability to swap seats on demand (even when I'm waiting at my gate) and the ability to quickly swap flights when your flight is delayed have historically been the best managed items and something that most airlines can't actually do yet. But more intangibly, DL's management of their own system does actually help with some of their integrations with travel agencies and integrations with basic airline functions.

With that said, its not perfect. United has definitely gotten some major upgrades to their app. Their app was a problem for a long time. There are still a few issues but its definitely one of the better mobile solutions today.