'IT Issue' Grounded All United Airlines Flights In The US (nbcnews.com)

For two and a half hours -- no take-offs. An anonymous reader quotes NBC News: All of United Airlines' domestic flights were grounded Sunday night because of a computer outage, the Federal Aviation Administration said as scores of angry travelers sounded off on social media... U.S. officials told NBC News that the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, had issues with low bandwidth. No further explanation was immediately available for what United described only as "an IT issue."
An hour ago United tweeted that they'd finally lifted the stop and were "working to get flights on their way." 66 flights were cancelled just at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, the Chicago Department of Aviation told the Associated Press, and though the article doesn't identify the total number of flights affected, "Chicago-based United Airlines and United Express operate more than 4,500 flights a day to 339 airports across five continents."

Comments

Windows 10 Auto Reboot

[zenlessyank]

Gotta love rebooting when MS wants you to reboot.

What is up with airlines IT structure

[SuperKendall]

This is not the first airline this has happened to, I think now something like three airlines in about a year? How on earth do all of these separate companies have the same problems where ANY breakage of the system mean planes with schedules pre-determined ages ago cannot fly? Is there some kind of Intuit Turbo Airline Manager software they all run??

WTF!

This is probably the strongest demonstration yet that we are all living in a computer simulation.

Re:What is up with airlines IT structure

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Well, probably because this back-end system, is managed by what used to be Hewlett Packard Enterprise. They've had so many layoffs, and shuffled from company to company so many times, that the people who actually know what they are doing are all long gone.

Re:What is up with airlines IT structure

[dbIII]

What you attach to a backhoe is your own business.

Re:What is up with airlines IT structure

[dunkelfalke]

How exactly airplane accidents being at an all time low is a result of capitalism? Are you one of these crazy people who worship capitalism as a deity?
Airplane accidents don't happen that often anymore because of strict regulations and aircraft being generally more intelligent. Capitalism has directly caused a lot of accidents, like Alaska Airlines Flight 261 (airline was too cheap for proper maintenance), Turkish Airlines Flight 981 (manufacturer was too cheap to fix a known design error), American Airlines Flight 191 (again, airline too cheap to do proper maintenance), JAL Flight 123 (yep, again maintenance) and so on. Yay capitalism. Same goes for delays and lost luggage, by the way. Strict regulations making it difficult for the airlines to weasel themselves out have helped, not capitalism.

from TFA

[nimbius]

U.S. officials told NBC News that the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, had issues with low bandwidth.

so you're complaining that a 60wpm VHF-based system from the late seventies that was never designed for high bandwidth communication beyond 300 baud, has problems delivering bandwidth intensive data? the average ACARS datagram is only 8 tuples. it sounds like one United's H1B candidates didnt take the time to RTFM before rolling out their code and immediately clobbered the system with garbage XML or metadata some middle manager wanted to include to improve productivity.

and once again, cutting corners in IT backfires

[Indy1]

I love reading when a company that is critical dependent on their IT infrastructure to function, cuts as many corners (and jobs) as possible in IT to save a buck, then has it all blow up in their face.

Target, Home Depot, United, Yahoo, etc.....they'll save millions, until they end up losing billions.