American Airlines Grounds Flights

Sez Zero writes "The Federal Aviation Administration said American Airlines requested a halt to hundreds of its U.S. flights on Tuesday as it works to resolve a reservation system problem. American Airlines explained on their Twitter feed they had a problem accessing their reservation system. Bad day to be on the AA ops team."

Comments

seems to happen now and then

[Trepidity]

From various airlines: 2004 #1, 2004 #2, 2011 #1, 2011 #2, and probably others I missed.

Move the planes from the gates

[magarity]

"At American's hub in Miami, The Miami Herald reports that landing AA flights have run out of available gates since none of the airline's departures are taking off. A passenger on one of those flights -- 66-year-old Richard Bell -- tells the Herald he had been stuck on an AA flight arriving from Baltimore. He told the newspaper that the aircraft's engines were running and that the air conditioning was working. But he also said the flight's pilots come over the public address system to warn fliers that some other systems were not functioning. "He mentioned the toilet specifically as a problem,'' Bell tells the Herald."

This is total lack of human compassion that someone can't get in one of those tractors, push the plane at the gate out of the way to a spot off to the side and let the plane with the people unload. What kind of heartless ass is running American's operations at that airport? Oh, gee, that might inconvenience the airline personel because the first plane would then have to be trundled back over since it needs to leave first when things resume.

Re:Move the planes from the gates

[couchslug]

It's fucking laziness.

I've towed MANY aircraft and it isn't at all difficult to do.

Basically, back towbar up to nose gear, unpin steering links (your towbar does the "steering" when towing), connect towbar (aircrew remain in cockpit to apply aircraft brakes if towbar accidentally disconnects under tow), remove wheel chocks, tow aircraft to new spot, chock wheels, disconnect towbar, reconnect steering links, drive tug to next job.

It "ain't shit" be the aircraft large or small.

Re:Are they on some older software that can't hand

[zachary.grafton]

I currently work for Silver Airways, but as I've experienced first hand, almost all of the airlines software system's suck some major ballsack. None of the airlines have undergone the massive rewrite that their reservations system need and they just keep bolting on more pieces of crap code to these ancient systems. United uses SHARES, and so does Silver Airways, but 2 different versions of the same software, and to make things worse, ours is rented off of Island Air and not a single human being can fix any of the stuff they need to do. The Silver Airways version doesn't even handle baggage charges in a decent fashion, forcing their employees to build a reservation just for a bag fee. It's always great when you have a functional TELEX printer that you can't use because not even the IT department can figure out how the hell SHARES is trying to route output. Personally, all the airlines are damned for not spending any money in updating reservations systems from the late 70s and early 80s. If you anyone is interested, you can basically trace all of the airlines reservations systems back to a company called EDS, which was at one time owned by Ross Perot.