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Comair System Crashes; Passengers Stranded
Broerman writes "30,000 people have had their flights cancelled by Comair this weekend thanks to a computer system shutdown. It appears that due to weather and other problems that flights began to be cancelled on Thursday and the backlog choked the system. 1,100 flights have been cancelled so far, including all flights through 12/26. Does anyone know what platform their system was based on? What kind of system just totally crashes? The official statement is that 'There was a cumulative effect with the canceled flights and trying to get crew assigned that caused the system to be overwhelmed.' It seems highly improbable that a system would crash because it had too many reservations. The system should only be able to hold as many reservations as it has flights/seats. It would seem that it's more likely that the system was overloaded with use and that caused a meltdown. When you add in the problems experienced by US Airways, this hasn't been a Merry Christmas for many."
Anybody know what they were running? I'd like to see this flamewar get started as soon as possible.
Probably not. It's an old story (quickly retold):
Army base computer going down every night. So the grunt in charge of it stayed the night to see what was happening. When the computers went down, he heard the hum of the floor buffer.
The janitor had plugged his floor buffer into the same power as the computers and it caused the crashes. It was quickly fixed by telling the janitor to not do that and putting locking covers on the power outlets.
But they dreaded telling the base commander what the issue was. So they told him it was "a buffer problem."
That is not a bug but an accurate model of reality. When you strand 32,768 passengers, they will turn negative.
A friend was sysadmin at a manufacturing plant, and the janitor kept plugging into the power conditioned sockets with a very large, power-hungry floor polisher. He was actually blowing power supplies. Every one cost several thousand dollars in service calls to replace the power supply and downtime.
My friend put "COMPUTER USE ONLY" stickers OVER the power-conditioned sockets. The janitor ripped them off to plug in, and blew another power supply.
My friend finally confronted the janitor, who was a really obstinate PITA. He stood there and said "Yeah, I did it, and I'm gonna keep doing it, and I don't give a damn about you or your fu*kin' computers."
This was a automotive union shop, very difficult to get people fired.
But, in a show of karma rarely witnessed by mortals, the VP of the division was standing within earshot but out of sight. When the janitor finished saying he didn't give a damn that he was costing the company $10,000 a week because he was too lazy to go get an extension cord, the VP walked around the corner and said hi. I don't know whether the guy ran to his car or the VP kicked his ass right over the top of it.