We can expect a lot more of what we have witnessed in the last two weeks. First, it was Southwest Airlines last week and Delta Airlines this week. Both airlines were grounded and there was nothing that could be done until the computer system running just about everything was fixed.
But the piece-meal fixing is not going to solve the problem, former airlines executives say, as long as the airlines refuse to absorb the huge cost of rebuilding their reservation systems from the ground up, reports Reuters.
Yes, airlines have spent a lot of money on new features, such as the automated check-in kiosks, real-time luggage tracking features and all kinds of fancy mobile apps. But Scott Nason, a former chief information officer at American Airlines Group Inc (AAL.O), says back when he worked for the airline, any long-term investment in computer technology was considered a “hard sell.”
Once upon a time, computer software was used to book flights and issue tickets. The biggest air carriers have been using a specialized IBM (IBM.N) operating system designed in the 1960s and known as Transaction Processing Facility, or TPF. The TFP was programmed to handle large numbers of transactions quickly, and it is still updated by IBM, which did a major rewrite of the operating system about 10 years ago.
Herein lies one of the problems. A lot of software for special features, including everything from check-ins to cabin upgrades, to the tracking of airline loyalty awards to systems that interact with mobile apps have been either built on top of the TFP operating system or connected to it. The growing complexity of this matrix of overlapping software was prime ground for glitches.
“They have surrounded that old industry infrastructure with modern technology,” Bob Edwards, who previously served as United Continental Holdings Inc’s former chief information officer, tells Reuters, according to the Consumerist. “Those systems have to always reach back into the old core technologies to retrieve a reservation or to figure out who flies between Dallas and New York City.”
USA Today says we must not expect solutions to the technology problem any time soon. It will take a number of years to solve. Daniel Baker, CEO of flight tracking site FlightAware, was quoted by USA Today: “It’s not like the airline can say, ‘We’ll invest in this, and by Christmas we’ ll guarantee reliability.’ These are multiyear endeavors … (And) in general, the airlines are like a wristwatch. Every little piece has to work perfectly or it all falls apart.”
And this is exactly what happened with Delta Airlines. Around 300 of Delta’s 7,000 servers are not connected to an alternative power source. On Monday, when a faulty piece of power control equipment caught fire, it sparked a power surge that knocked out power. The servers that did not have an alternate power source were unable to communicate with the servers that did have backup power, shutting down the whole system.
