AA "technical issues"

AV8R_87

AV8R_87

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Anyone know more about what AA's technical issues are?
Just heard about it on morning news.
 
Lindberg said:
$100 says the CEO didn't program or implement the dispatching system, or even design it.
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Where did I ever say he did?

IT is always low hanging fruit for cuts because they are invisible when they are doing their job correctly. People don’t understand how important it is until they get cut to the bone and the sh*t hits the fan. This is a story as old as time.
 
Lindberg said:
$100 says the CEO didn't program or implement the dispatching system, or even design it.
Click to expand...

Yep. Sabre has been around since the 60s - we've had quite a few CEOs come and go since then! It's actually been reasonably reliable, although there's been a push in the last decade or so to move parts of it to a more modern setup.
 
Back in the day they made a consumer access point for it called EaasySabre. I got my AAdvantage number because that was my login id for that service.
 
AKiss20 said:
Where did I ever say he did?

IT is always low hanging fruit for cuts because they are invisible when they are doing their job correctly. People don’t understand how important it is until they get cut to the bone and the sh*t hits the fan. This is a story as old as time.
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And do you think CEOs of $50 billion companies make IT decisions? And that's what their bonuses are based on?
 
It's becoming a fun annual tradition: "Place your bets, place your bets! Spin the wheel and see which corporate behemoth is going to leave their customers stranded at the gate this festive season due to the collapse of their scheduling infrastructure! Ho, ho, ho!!"
 
Jim_R said:
It's becoming a fun annual tradition: "Place your bets, place your bets! Spin the wheel and see which corporate behemoth is going to leave their customers stranded at the gate this festive season due to the collapse of their scheduling infrastructure! Ho, ho, ho!!"
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Yeah, fortunately this one only lasted an hour! :)
 
It has always amazed me how many large corporations still use very old software to manage their business.

I remember NWA before Delta bought them in 2010(?), their system was still all text based, at least at our station. No fancy GUI for them, just a cheat sheet of the text prompts needed to work the system. Even the releases for the flight crew was about 20-30 pages from a dot matrix printer in the office...in 2010.

Granted, up until 2015 we were still calling FSS on the phone to issue NOTAMs, until NOTAM Manager came out and we could do it online.
 
midwestpa24 said:
It has always amazed me how many large corporations still use very old software to manage their business.

I remember NWA before Delta bought them in 2010(?), their system was still all text based, at least at our station. No fancy GUI for them, just a cheat sheet of the text prompts needed to work the system. Even the releases for the flight crew was about 20-30 pages from a dot matrix printer in the office...in 2010.

Granted, up until 2015 we were still calling FSS on the phone to issue NOTAMs, until NOTAM Manager came out and we could do it online.
Click to expand...
It's not surprising. The costs (labor and time to convert/update to contemporary hardware and/or languages) is often unreasonable, even knowing there will be failures like this. It's incredibly difficult to convert from one programming language to another, regardless what the consultants say and recommend. I watched this in 2018 at a major aerospace company, just converting a small system from FORTRAN to C++. Only about 40% got correctly converted then the humans had to do the rest. The humans had to be expert in FORTRAN, C++ and the system in question. Those folks are few and far between, and they're getting fewer all the time.

I got hired at another aerospace company because I was fluent in FORTRAN, C++, Java, and Python. The FORTRAN code went back to the 70s but because it was the fastest code around (even now!), the decision was to not touch it. The company realized it was impractical to re-write everything, so there were "connectors" between the various software components. It was truly a study in software archeology!

Unless you're in the business, you don't understand that programming languages are very much like natural languages - there are aspects and nuances that don't convert 1 for 1. On the other hand, no need to learn to conjugate verbs. My students data structures & algorithm students don't understand why I won't let them use all the really fantastic features of Java (queues, stacks, lists, hash, etc). I keep reminding them that if they want to be successful in the business, cannot assume you'll always be working in Java (or whatever language I'm teaching this semester), so you better understand the concepts and details so you can implement in whatever language you're being paid to use.

Conversions of any of the legacy systems (FORTRAN, COBOL, MUMPs, etc) are usually not cost-effective, a better approach is to completely re-design and build from scratch but even that is unreasonably expensive, even for the Feds.
 
midwestpa24 said:
Even the releases for the flight crew was about 20-30 pages from a dot matrix printer in the office...in 2010.
Click to expand...

We're (AA) all iPad these days, but we were still printing our releases on a dot matrix printer until just a few years ago. The dot matrix printers are still in the crew rooms and at the gates, and some guys will print components of the paperwork (usually the crew list) even today.
 
murphey said:
It's not surprising. The costs (labor and time to convert/update to contemporary hardware and/or languages) is often unreasonable, even knowing there will be failures like this. It's incredibly difficult to convert from one programming language to another, regardless what the consultants say and recommend. I watched this in 2018 at a major aerospace company, just converting a small system from FORTRAN to C++. Only about 40% got correctly converted then the humans had to do the rest. The humans had to be expert in FORTRAN, C++ and the system in question. Those folks are few and far between, and they're getting fewer all the time.

I got hired at another aerospace company because I was fluent in FORTRAN, C++, Java, and Python. The FORTRAN code went back to the 70s but because it was the fastest code around (even now!), the decision was to not touch it. The company realized it was impractical to re-write everything, so there were "connectors" between the various software components. It was truly a study in software archeology!

Unless you're in the business, you don't understand that programming languages are very much like natural languages - there are aspects and nuances that don't convert 1 for 1. On the other hand, no need to learn to conjugate verbs. My students data structures & algorithm students don't understand why I won't let them use all the really fantastic features of Java (queues, stacks, lists, hash, etc). I keep reminding them that if they want to be successful in the business, cannot assume you'll always be working in Java (or whatever language I'm teaching this semester), so you better understand the concepts and details so you can implement in whatever language you're being paid to use.

Conversions of any of the legacy systems (FORTRAN, COBOL, MUMPs, etc) are usually not cost-effective, a better approach is to completely re-design and build from scratch but even that is unreasonably expensive, even for the Feds.
Click to expand...

I can imagine. In high school I was exposed to BASIC and QBASIC programming, and through Google and Youtube learned enough html code to make edits to our website. I've never gotten into the more advanced programming or languages.
 
Lindberg said:
I'm sure it was the vendor's CEO's fault.
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It took me years of working for a large company before I understood why it was the “buy” won out over “build”, every single time. If you buy something, you have a vendor to take the blame when something goes wrong. If it’s home-grown, you have to take responsibility for it. Nobody seems to want to do that.
 
DaleB said:
It took me years of working for a large company before I understood why it was the “buy” won out over “build”, every single time. If you buy something, you have a vendor to take the blame when something goes wrong. If it’s home-grown, you have to take responsibility for it. Nobody seems to want to do that.
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And the little thing about core competencies.
 
Lindberg said:
And the little thing about core competencies.
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I hate to say it as a former software engineer, but when I was leading IT departments, I wanted external vendors / contractors over internal full time guys almost every time.
In my most recent role our outside guys were expensive (to me) billing $250 / hour but they busted their asses like their next meal depended on it. My internal 20yr workers were very comfortable and knew when they could push boundaries and their paychecks had nothing to do with their throughput. I never liked the idea of outsourcing until I was the one doing it. The external guys would deliver faster and more complete solutions almost every time.
 
kayoh190 said:
We're (AA) all iPad these days, but we were still printing our releases on a dot matrix printer until just a few years ago. The dot matrix printers are still in the crew rooms and at the gates, and some guys will print components of the paperwork (usually the crew list) even today.
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It's been almost 30 years but is this close?

JP*[flt num]/[dt][dep cty]

i liked the form feed paper in the dot matrix printers. What was it? About 4" page length? Folded up very neatly for carrying in a jacket pocket.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I hate to say it as a former software engineer, but when I was leading IT departments, I wanted external vendors / contractors over internal full time guys almost every time.
In my most recent role our outside guys were expensive (to me) billing $250 / hour but they busted their asses like their next meal depended on it. My internal 20yr workers were very comfortable and knew when they could push boundaries and their paychecks had nothing to do with their throughput. I never liked the idea of outsourcing until I was the one doing it. The external guys would deliver faster and more complete solutions almost every time.
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Even software companies, which have buildings full of software engineers writing software products all day, don't write their own software for CRM, payroll, IT, office productivity, etc., etc., etc.
 
midwestpa24 said:
There is probably some measure of truth to that!

For some reason I know quite a few former IT geeks that jumped ship to fly airplanes. I'm not sure the correlation.
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Personality. Both require attention to a level of details that the general public has no concept. I tell my cs students that you have to be a bit OCD and definitely have some level of anal retentiveness.And really like puzzles
 
Larry in TN said:
It's been almost 30 years but is this close?

JP*[flt num]/[dt][dep cty]

i liked the form feed paper in the dot matrix printers. What was it? About 4" page length? Folded up very neatly for carrying in a jacket pocket.
Click to expand...

Haha - looks close to me! JP* definitely pulls the flight plan, but we've been spoiled by GUI overlays for so long that I'd have to look up the rest of the syntax. :)
 
Newer versions of software becoming available doesn't make the old software break.
 
How do (western) European airlines do it, brand new software or also dark ages like ours?
Do they get better results?
Just curious if anyone is doing better at this.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
How do (western) European airlines do it, brand new software or also dark ages like ours?
Do they get better results?
Just curious if anyone is doing better at this.
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Many fewer flights than in the US. According to the FAA, there are over 45,000 daily flights in the US. According to EuroControl, the peak was July 7, 2023 with 34,367 daily flights in Europe. For 2023, the top 10 countries in the European Union averaged 30,000 flights a day.

I'm bored. Not much else to do but look up statistics.
 
kayoh190 said:
The system that handles AA's back end flight planning, load planning, etc...went down. Glad to be at home drinking eggnog!
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Holy shrikes. I think I may have lost my last opportunity to score some egg nog yesterday.

(edit. This is sort of relevant to AA.)
 
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