Computer Glitch Friday Grounded US Airways Flights

mschaffer writes "A computer glitch Friday night snarled the travel plans of US Airways customers, as reports flooded in of flights grounded around the country." As someone stranded for several hours yesterday by this outage, "glitch" seems like quite a euphemism. With outgoing flights blocked, and new ones arriving full of passengers expecting to meet connections, the atmosphere got a little heated. Customers could see nice weather, and planes lined up outside, but "The System Is Down" trumps all. The E concourse at Charlotte (a US Airways hub) was packed full of customers ranging from livid (a handful) to merely angry (most) to calmly resigned — which means those of us with seats, snacks, and books or computers. It was disheartening to see how brittle is the infrastructure the airline employs; with the part of the system visible to airline employees down, customers thought they might get more information, or even rebooking, through the US Airways website. But that was down, too, and all the desk staff could do is shrug.

Comments

Re:umm...

[DesScorp]

I work in airport IT, so I'll describe what I see airline crews doing during trouble. If the system at one gate or terminal is down, yes, then they'll send the plane on it's way. This is called "boarding manually". They simply hand collect tickets, hand count bags, etc, and send the flight off. After they've gathered all of the info thats been collected manually, they'll send it to their local office or front desk and process it at working terminals that have a connection to airline systems. It's a pain, but do-able. But if EVERYBODY is down, then the whole thing grinds to a halt. If no one has any access to all the schedule info, weight and baggage, manifests, etc.... then it's simply impossible to board manually on a massive scale.